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A new laboratory to study hadron-hadron interactions

The ALICE collaboration Collaboration, Alice ; Acharya, Shreyasi ; Adamova, Dagmar ; et al.
Nature 588 (2020) 232-238, 2020.
Inspire Record 1797617 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.100195

One of the key challenges for nuclear physics today is to understand from first principles the effective interaction between hadrons with different quark content. First successes have been achieved using techniques that solve the dynamics of quarks and gluons on discrete space-time lattices. Experimentally, the dynamics of the strong interaction have been studied by scattering hadrons off each other. Such scattering experiments are difficult or impossible for unstable hadrons and so high-quality measurements exist only for hadrons containing up and down quarks. Here we demonstrate that measuring correlations in the momentum space between hadron pairs produced in ultrarelativistic proton-proton collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) provides a precise method with which to obtain the missing information on the interaction dynamics between any pair of unstable hadrons. Specifically, we discuss the case of the interaction of baryons containing strange quarks (hyperons). We demonstrate how, using precision measurements of p-omega baryon correlations, the effect of the strong interaction for this hadron-hadron pair can be studied with precision similar to, and compared with, predictions from lattice calculations. The large number of hyperons identified in proton-proton collisions at the LHC, together with an accurate modelling of the small (approximately one femtometre) inter-particle distance and exact predictions for the correlation functions, enables a detailed determination of the short-range part of the nucleon-hyperon interaction.

4 data tables

The p--$\Xi^{-}$ $\oplus$ $\overline{\mathrm{p}}$--$\overline{\Xi}^{+}$ correlation function.

The p--$\Xi^{-}$ $\oplus$ $\overline{\mathrm{p}}$--$\overline{\Xi}^{+}$ correlation function.

The p--$\Omega^{-}$ $\oplus$ $\overline{\mathrm{p}}$--$\overline{\Omega}^{+}$ correlation function.

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First observation of an attractive interaction between a proton and a multi-strange baryon

The ALICE collaboration Acharya, Shreyasi ; Adamova, Dagmar ; Adhya, Souvik Priyam ; et al.
Phys.Rev.Lett. 123 (2019) 112002, 2019.
Inspire Record 1731784 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.91131

This work presents the first experimental observation of the attractive strong interaction between a proton and a multi-strange baryon (hyperon) $\Xi^-$. The result is extracted from two-particle correlations of combined $\rm{p}-\Xi^{-}$$\oplus$$\rm{\bar{p}}-\bar{\Xi}^{+}$ pairs measured in p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV at the LHC with ALICE. The measured correlation function is compared with the prediction obtained assuming only an attractive Coulomb interaction and a standard deviation in the range $[3.6,5.3]$ is found. Since the measured $\rm{p}-\Xi^{-}$$\oplus$$\rm{\bar{p}}-\bar{\Xi}^{+}$ correlation is significantly enhanced with respect to the Coulomb prediction, the presence of an additional, strong, attractive interaction is evident. The data are compatible with recent lattice calculations by the HAL-QCD Collaboration, with a standard deviation in the range $ [1.8,3.7]$. The lattice potential predicts a shallow repulsive $\Xi^-$ interaction within pure neutron matter at saturation densities and this implies stiffer equations of state for neutron-rich matter including hyperons. Implications of the strong interaction for the modeling of neutron stars are discussed.

2 data tables

The p$-$p $\oplus$ $\overline{\mathrm{p}}-\overline{\mathrm{p}}$ correlation function.

The p$-\Xi^{-}$ $\oplus$ $\overline{\mathrm{p}}-\overline{\Xi}^{-}$ correlation function.