Evidence for light-by-light scattering in heavy-ion collisions with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Abstract

Light-by-light scattering ($\gamma \gamma \to \gamma \gamma$) 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 (Pb) ions. Using 480 $\mu$b${}^{-1}$ of Pb+Pb collision data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV by the ATLAS detector, the ATLAS Collaboration reports evidence for the $\gamma \gamma \to \gamma \gamma$ reaction. A total of 13 candidate events are observed with an expected background of 2.6$\pm$0.7 events. After background subtraction and analysis corrections, the fiducial cross section of the process $\text{Pb+Pb}(\gamma \gamma )\to {\text{Pb}}^{(\ast )}\text{+}{\text{Pb}}^{(\ast )}\gamma \gamma$, for photon transverse energy $E_{\mathrm{T}}>$3 GeV, photon absolute pseudorapidity $|\eta |<$2.4, diphoton invariant mass greater than 6 GeV, diphoton transverse momentum lower than 2 GeV and diphoton acoplanarity below 0.01, is measured to be 70 $\pm$ 24 (stat.) $\pm$ 17 (syst.) nb, which is in agreement with Standard Model predictions.

34 pages in total, author list starting page 18, 6 figures, 2 tables. published version. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2016-05/

References in corpus (7)

• The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations
• Herwig++ Physics and Manual
• EPS09 - a New Generation of NLO and LO Nuclear Parton Distribution Functions
• Luminosity determination in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Electron and photon energy calibration with the ATLAS detector using LHC Run 1 data
• Electron reconstruction and identification efficiency measurements with the ATLAS detector using the 2011 LHC proton-proton collision data
• Consequences of Dirac Theory of the Positron

Cited by in corpus (214)

• Topological Photonics
• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Charged particle motion and radiation in strong electromagnetic fields
• Revised constraints and Belle II sensitivity for visible and invisible axion-like particles
• Evidence for light-by-light scattering and searches for axion-like particles in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=$ 5.02 TeV
• Conceptual Design Report for the LUXE Experiment
• Introductory Notes on Non-linear Electrodynamics and its Applications
• Measurement of $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ Momentum and Angular Distributions from Linearly Polarized Photon Collisions
• Observation of light-by-light scattering in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions with the ATLAS detector
• The High Quality QCD Axion and the LHC
• Consistency of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory
• Photonuclear and Two-photon Interactions at High-Energy Nuclear Colliders
• Gauge field theories with Lorentz-violating operators of arbitrary dimension
• Magnetic monopoles revisited: Models and searches at colliders and in the Cosmos
• Black hole thermodynamics in the presence of nonlinear electromagnetic fields
• Measurement of light-by-light scattering and search for axion-like particles with 2.2 nb${}^{-1}$ of Pb+Pb data with the ATLAS detector
• Initial transverse-momentum broadening of Breit-Wheeler process in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Observation of centrality-dependent acoplanarity for muon pairs produced via two-photon scattering in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Searching for axion-like particles with proton tagging at the LHC
• A new approach to modelling elastic and inelastic photon-initiated production at the LHC: SuperChic 4
• Anomalous electromagnetic moments of $\tau$ lepton in $\gamma \gamma \to {\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$ reaction in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC
• The Present and Future of QCD
• gamma-UPC: Automated generation of exclusive photon-photon processes in ultraperipheral proton and nuclear collisions with varying form factors
• Two-particle azimuthal correlations in photonuclear ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV with ATLAS
• Probing ALPs and the Axiverse with Superconducting Radiofrequency Cavities
• All-optical signatures of Strong-Field QED in the vacuum emission picture
• Three-pulse photon-photon scattering
• Mapping the Electromagnetic Fields of Heavy-Ion Collisions with the Breit-Wheeler Process
• New physics searches with heavy-ion collisions at the LHC
• New physics and tau $g-2$ using LHC heavy ion collisions
• Exclusive dimuon production in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV with ATLAS
• Strong-Field Physics in QED and QCD: From Fundamentals to Applications
• Two-photon production of dilepton pairs in peripheral heavy ion collisions
• A generator of forward neutrons for ultra-peripheral collisions: $\textbf{n$\mathbf{_O^O}$n}$
• Observation of forward neutron multiplicity dependence of dimuon acoplanarity in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=$ 5.02 TeV
• Expanding Nuclear Physics Horizons with the Gamma Factory
• Pair production in temporally and spatially oscillating fields
• Sauter-Schwinger effect for colliding laser pulses
• Extending the constraint for axion-like particles as resonances at the LHC and laser beam experiments
• Constraining Gluonic Quartic Gauge Coupling Operators with $gg\to \gamma \gamma$
• Light-by-Light Scattering at Future $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ Colliders
• Overview of high-density QCD studies with the CMS experiment at the LHC
• Direct accessibility of the fundamental constants governing light-by-light scattering
• Is the Standard Model in the Swampland? Consistency Requirements from Gravitational Scattering
• Phase-space analysis of the Schwinger effect in inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields
• Opportunities for new physics searches with heavy ions at colliders
• Di-lepton production from a single photon in strong magnetic fields: Vacuum dichroism
• Single Particle Detection System for Strong-Field QED Experiments
• Searching for the axion-like particle at the EIC
• Photon collider search strategy for sleptons and dark matter at the LHC
• Multiple interactions and rapidity gap survival
• Searching for axion-like particles at future electron-positron colliders
• Report on Progress in Physics: Observation of the Breit-Wheeler Process and Vacuum Birefringence in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Hadronic light-by-light scattering amplitudes from lattice QCD versus dispersive sum rules
• Electromagnetic Shocks in Quantum Vacuum
• Light-by-light scattering in ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions at low diphoton masses
• A search for axion-like particles in light-by-light scattering at the CLIC
• The DeLLight experiment to observe an optically-induced change of the vacuum index
• Vacuum birefringence and diffraction at XFEL: from analytical estimates to optimal parameters
• Optical Kerr effect in vacuum
• Effective interactions in Ricci-Based Gravity models below the non-metricity scale
• Letter of Intent: Towards a Vacuum Birefringence Experiment at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields
• First search for exclusive diphoton production at high mass with tagged protons in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV
• Bell inequalities in 2-2 scattering
• Electromagnetic fields in ultra-peripheral relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Lepton pair photoproduction in peripheral relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Considerations on the modified Maxwell electrodynamics in the presence of an electric and magnetic background
• A novel exact magnetic black hole solution in four-dimensional extended scalar-tensor-Gauss-Bonnet theory
• Exploring Nonlinear Electrodynamics Theories: Shadows of Regular Black Holes and Horizonless Ultra-Compact Objects
• Observing Light-by-Light Scattering in Vacuum with an Asymmetric Photon Collider
• Chirp effects on pair production in oscillating electric fields with spatial inhomogeneity
• Coordinate singularities of self-interacting vector field theories
• Discovery of higher order QED effect for the vacuum pair production
• Search for an axion-like particle with forward proton scattering in association with photon pairs at ATLAS
• On the Heisenberg limit for detecting vacuum birefringence
• A laser-plasma platform for photon-photon physics
• Light-by-Light Scattering and Spacetime Noncommutativity
• Light-by-Light Scattering at Next-to-Leading Order in QCD and QED
• Constraining nonlinear corrections to Maxwell electrodynamics using $\gamma \gamma$ scattering
• Photon-photon physics at the LHC and laser beam experiments, present and future
• Nonlinear electromagnetic fields in strictly stationary spacetimes
• A note on nonlinear electrodynamics
• Ultra-peripheral collisions and hadronic structure
• Bounds on photon scattering
• Exact black holes in string-inspired Euler-Heisenberg theory
• The two-photon decay of X(6900) from light-by-light scattering at the LHC
• Born-Infeld Gravity: Constraints from Light-by-Light Scattering and an Effective Field Theory Perspective
• Using nonlinear Breit-Wheeler to test nonlinear vacuum birefringence
• Anomalous magnetohydrodynamics with temperature-dependent electric conductivity and application to the global polarization
• Exciting Ions: a Systematic Treatment of Ultraperipheral Heavy Ion Collisions with Nuclear Breakup
• Exclusive dielectron production in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{\text{NN}}}}=5.02$ TeV with ATLAS
• Light-by-Light Scattering in a Photon-Photon Collider
• Polarized light-by-light scattering at the CLIC induced by axion-like particles
• Strong-field vacuum polarisation with high energy lasers
• The ${\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ collider to sensitivity estimates on the magnetic and electric dipole moments of the tau-lepton
• The QED four -- photon amplitudes off-shell: part 1
• LHC limits on axion-like particles from heavy-ion collisions
• The QED four-photon amplitudes off-shell: part 2
• Probing anomalous quartic $\gamma \gamma \gamma \gamma$ couplings in light-by-light collisions at the CLIC
• Single- and double-scattering production of four muons in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider
• A new calculation of semi-exclusive axion-like particle production at the LHC
• Hadron Collider Probes of the Quartic Couplings of Gluons to the Photon and $Z$ Boson
• On the observability of field-assisted birefringent Delbrück scattering
• Pervasiveness of the breakdown of self-interacting vector field theories
• Two-loop massive QCD and QED helicity amplitudes for light-by-light scattering
• Towards a direct measurement of the quantum vacuum Lagrangian coupling coefficients using two counter propagating super-intense laser pulses
• Seiberg-Witten map Invariant Scatterings
• Frequency variation for in vacuo photon propagation in the Standard-Model Extension
• Coulomb's law modification driven by a logarithmic electrodynamics
• Exclusive axionlike particle production by gluon -- induced interactions in hadronic collisions
• Photoproduction of $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ in peripheral isobar collisions
• QED vacuum nonlinearity in Laguerre-Gauss beams
• Stokes-anti-Stokes correlated photon properties akin to photonic Cooper pairs
• Exclusive and dissociative J/$\psi$ photoproduction, and exclusive dimuon production, in p$-$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=8.16$ TeV
• Probe of the Randall-Sundrum-like model with the small curvature via light-by-light scattering at the LHC
• Gravitational signatures of a nonlinear electrodynamics in $f(R,T)$ gravity
• Generation of Ultrarelativistic Vortex Leptons with Large Orbital Angular Momenta
• Treatments and placebos for the pathologies of effective field theories
• Vacuum Birefringence in a Supercritical Magnetic Field and a Subcritical Electric Field
• Self-energy problem, vacuum polarization, and dual symmetry in Born-Infeld-type $U(1)$ gauge theories
• Fundamental constants from photon-photon scattering in three-beam collisions
• Hodograph solutions of the wave equation of nonlinear electrodynamics in the quantum vacuum
• Vacuum material properties and Cherenkov radiation in Logarithmic Electrodynamics
• Comparative of light propagation in Born-Infeld, Euler-Heisenberg and ModMax nonlinear electrodynamics
• Light-by-Light Scattering in the Presence of Magnetic Fields
• Estimation of electric field in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Dimuon and ditau production in photon-photon collisions at next-to-leading order in QED
• X17: A new force, or evidence for a hard $\gamma +\gamma$ process?
• Ultraperipheral nuclear interactions
• Electroweak, QCD and flavour physics studies with ATLAS data from Run 2 of the LHC
• Effective Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangians in models of QED
• On Measuring Stimulated Photon-photon Scattering using Multiple Ultraintense Lasers
• Scattering properties of charged black holes in nonlinear and Maxwell's electrodynamics
• Evidence for light-by-light scattering in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV
• Measurement of light-by-light scattering and the Breit-Wheeler process, and search for axion-like particles in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV
• Geometry of ultraperipheral nuclear collisions
• Optical Signatures of Einstein-Euler-Heisenberg AdS/dS Black Holes in the light of Event Horizon Telescope
• A dark-field setup for the measurement of light-by-light scattering with high-intensity lasers
• Light polarization oscillations induced by photon-photon scattering
• Exclusive photon-fusion production of even-spin resonances and exotic QED atoms in high-energy hadron collisions
• Coherent enhancement of QED cross-sections in electromagnetic backgrounds
• LHC as a photon-photon collider: bounds on ${\Gamma }_{X\to \gamma \gamma }$
• Collective behavior of light in vacuum
• New opportunities at the photon energy frontier
• Elastic light-by-light scattering in a nonminimal Lorentz violation scenario
• Strategy to measure tau $g-2$ via photon fusion in LHC proton collisions
• Phenomenology of a Born-Infeld extension of the $U(1{)}_{\mathrm{Y}}$ sector at lepton colliders
• Conundrum of regular black holes with nonlinear electromagnetic fields
• Azimuthal decorrelation for photon induced dijet production in ultra-peripheral collisions of heavy ions
• Axionlike particles searches in reactor experiments
• Two-photon decay of fully-charmed tetraquarks from light-by-light scattering at the LHC
• Automated next-to-leading order QCD and electroweak predictions of photon-photon processes in ultraperipheral collisions
• Electroweak monopoles with a non-linearly realized weak hypercharge
• Holographic Heat Engines Coupled with Logarithmic $U(1)$ Gauge Theory
• On internal mechanical properties of Electroweak Magnetic Monopoles and their effects on stability
• Euler-Heisenberg waves propagating in a magnetic background
• On the absence of shock waves and vacuum birefringence in Born--Infeld electrodynamics
• Interferometric measurement of the deflection of light by light in air
• Importance of mesons in light-by-light scattering in ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions at the LHC
• Charged-hadron and identified-hadron ($K_{\mathrm{S}}^0$, $\Lambda$, ${\Xi }^{-}$) yield measurements in photo-nuclear Pb+Pb and $p$+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV with ATLAS
• How to exploit driving and dissipation to stabilize and manipulate quantum many-body states
• Photoproduction of lepton pair in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• A Dirac-material-inspired non-linear electrodynamic model
• Thermodynamics of blackbody radiation in nonlinear electrodynamics
• Calculation of one-loop integrals for four-photon amplitudes by functional reduction method
• Light propagating in a Born-Infeld background as seen by an accelerated observer
• Exact Diagonalisation of Photon Bose-Einstein Condensates with Thermo-Optic Interaction
• Primer of Strong-Field Quantum Electrodynamics for Experimentalists
• Production of true para-muonium in linearly polarized photon fusions
• Coulomb Law in the Non-Uniform Euler-Heisenberg Theory
• Schwarzschild spacetime immersed in test nonlinear electromagnetic fields
• Elastic scattering of virtual photons via quark loop in Double-Logarithmic Approximation
• Impossibility of obtaining a CP-violating Euler-Heisenberg effective theory from a viable modification of QED
• Effect of relativity and vacuum fluctuations on quantum measurement
• Solar System Constraints on Light Propagation from Higher Derivative Corrections to General Relativity and Implications for Fundamental Physics
• Monte Carlo modelling of the linear Breit-Wheeler process within the GEANT4 framework
• Bounds on the scale of noncommutativity from mono photon production in ATLAS Runs -1 and -2 experiments at LHC energies
• Dilepton photoproduction measures the fluctuations of initial electromagnetic fields in nuclear collisions
• On the physical (im)possibility of lightsabers
• Sufficient conditions for unbounded superradiance in black hole spacetimes sourced by nonlinear electrodynamics
• Photon-Photon Collisions with SuperChic
• Signatures of linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in polarized $\gamma \gamma$ collisions
• Chirality and Magnetic Field
• Born-Infeld nonlinear electromagnetism in relativistic heavy ion collisions
• Photon frequency variation in non-linear electro-magnetism
• Lepton pair production in ultra-peripheral collisions
• Induced CP-violation in the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian
• libepa -- a C++/Python library for calculations of cross sections of ultraperipheral collisions
• Particle-beam scattering from strong-field QED
• Probing modified plasma waves in non-linear electrodynamics
• Influence of a Perfectly Conducting Plate on the Uehling Potential of QED
• Extending the Euler-Heisenberg action to include effects of local Lorentz-symmetry violating backgrounds
• Assisted neutrino pair production in combined external fields
• SMEFT Constraints on New Physics Beyond the Standard Model
• X-ray vacuum diffraction at finite spatio-temporal offset
• Remarks on inverse electrodynamics
• Conformal scalar NUT-like dyons in conformal electrodynamics
• UV/IR mixing in Noncommutative SU(N) Yang-Mills theory
• Singular electromagnetic fields in nonlinear electrodynamics with a constant background field
• Electromagnetic waves in Born Electrodynamics
• Two shadows of a single black hole: Vacuum birefringence phenomena within Einstein-nonlinear-electrodynamics
• Shining a Light on the QGP - Electroweak Probes Experimental Summary
• Toward quantum-noise-limited interferometric measurements of optical nonlinearity in vacuum
• Ultra-peripheral-collision studies in the fixed-target mode with the proton and lead LHC beams
• Upcgen: a Monte Carlo simulation program for dilepton pair production in ultra-peripheral collisions of heavy ions
• Asymptotic Freedom and Vacuum Polarization Determine the Astrophysical End State of Relativistic Gravitational Collapse: Quark--Gluon Plasma Star Instead of Black Hole
• Comparison of wave-mixing processes in rarefied gas and QED vacuum using numerical simulations
• Stationary States for Fermions in an External Electric Field
• The intrinsic pathology of self-interacting vector fields
• On macroscopic residual QCD force of electrodynamics
• Impact of neutral fluxes and signal significance optimization on semi-exclusive $pp\to t\bar{t}$ production via deep learning training
• Constraining models of hadronic showers using proton-Oxygen collisions at the LHC involving proton/neutron tagging
• Transverse electric waves in Bandos-Lechner-Sorokin-Townsend nonlinear electrodynamics
• Pseudoscalar heavy quarkonium production in heavy ion ultraperipheral collision