Peter Christiansen
Professor
Experimental Evidence for an Attractive p-φ Interaction
Author
Summary, in English
This Letter presents the first experimental evidence of the attractive strong interaction between a proton and a φ meson. The result is obtained from two-particle correlations of combined p-φ p¯-φ pairs measured in high-multiplicity pp collisions at s=13 TeV by the ALICE Collaboration. The spin-averaged scattering length and effective range of the p-φ interaction are extracted from the fully corrected correlation function employing the Lednický-Lyuboshits approach. In particular, the imaginary part of the scattering length vanishes within uncertainties, indicating that inelastic processes do not play a prominent role for the p-φ interaction. These data demonstrate that the interaction is dominated by elastic p-φ scattering. Furthermore, an analysis employing phenomenological Gaussian- and Yukawa-type potentials is conducted. Under the assumption of the latter, the N-φ coupling constant is found to be gN-φ=0.14±0.03(stat)±0.02(syst). This work provides valuable experimental input to accomplish a self-consistent description of the N-φ interaction, which is particularly relevant for the more fundamental studies on partial restoration of chiral symmetry in nuclear medium. © 2021 CERN.
Department/s
- Particle and nuclear physics
- eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration
Publishing year
2021
Language
English
Publication/Series
Physical Review Letters
Volume
127
Issue
17
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
American Physical Society
Topic
- Subatomic Physics
Keywords
- Atomic physics
- Correlation function
- Effective range
- Experimental evidence
- High multiplicity
- Imaginary parts
- Inelastic process
- Scattering length
- Strong interaction
- Two-particle correlations
- Uncertainty
- Tellurium compounds
- article
- chirality
- correlation function
- uncertainty
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1079-7114