Caterina Doglioni
Affiliated
Evidence for light-by-light scattering in heavy-ion collisions with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
Author
Summary, in English
Light-by-light scattering (γγ → γγ) is a quantum-mechanical process that is forbidden in the classical theory of electrodynamics. This reaction is accessible at the Large Hadron Collider thanks to the large electromagnetic field strengths generated by ultra-relativistic colliding lead ions. Using 480 μ1 of lead-lead collision data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV by the ATLAS detector, here we report evidence for light-by-light scattering. A total of 13 candidate events were observed with an expected background of 2.6 ± 0.7 events. After background subtraction and analysis corrections, the fiducial cross-section of the process Pb + Pb (γγ) → Pb(∗) + Pb(∗)γγ,for photon transverse energy ET > 3GeV, photon absolute pseudorapidity |η| <2.4, diphoton invariant mass greater than 6GeV, diphoton transverse momentum lower than 2GeV and diphoton acoplanarity below 0.01, is measured to be 70 ± 24 (stat.) ±17 (syst.) nb, which is in agreement with the standard model predictions. © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.
Department/s
- Particle and nuclear physics
- eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration
Publishing year
2017
Language
English
Pages
852-858
Publication/Series
Nature Physics
Volume
13
Issue
9
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Topic
- Subatomic Physics
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1745-2473