Observation of Forward Neutron Multiplicity Dependence of Dimuon Acoplanarity in Ultraperipheral Pb-Pb Collisions at sNN =5.02 TeV

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The first measurement of the dependence of γγ→μ+μ- production on the multiplicity of neutrons emitted very close to the beam direction in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions is reported. Data for lead-lead interactions at sNN=5.02 TeV, with an integrated luminosity of approximately 1.5 nb-1, are collected using the CMS detector at the LHC. The azimuthal correlations between the two muons in the invariant mass region 88.3. The back-to-back correlation structure from leading-order photon-photon scattering is found to be significantly broader for events with a larger number of emitted neutrons from each nucleus, corresponding to interactions with a smaller impact parameter. This observation provides a data-driven demonstration that the average transverse momentum of photons emitted from relativistic heavy ions has an impact parameter dependence. These results provide new constraints on models of photon-induced interactions in ultraperipheral collisions. They also provide a baseline to search for possible final-state effects on lepton pairs caused by traversing a quark-gluon plasma produced in hadronic heavy ion collisions.

Department(s)

Physics and Engineering

Publication Title

Physical Review Letters

Volume

127

Issue

12

Publication Date

9-17-2021

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.122001

ISSN

00319007

E-ISSN

10797114

PubMed ID

34597080

Comments

The CMS Collaboration includes over 100 authors. This record includes the Bethel author and the first 5 authors listed. The full list of authors can be viewed on the downloaded document or at the original publisher's website - https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.122001

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