Double-slit experiment at fermi scale: coherent photoproduction in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

The double-slit experiment has become a classic thought experiment, for its clarity in expressing the central puzzle of quantum mechanics -- wave-particle complementarity. Such wave-particle duality continues to be challenged and investigated in a broad range of entities with electrons, neutrons, helium atoms, C${}_{60}$ fullerenes, Bose-Einstein condensates and biological molecules. All existing experiments are performed with the scale larger than angstrom. In this article, we present a double-slit scenario at fermi scale with new entities -- coherent photon products in heavy-ion collisions. Virtual photons from the electromagnetic fields of relativistic heavy ions can fluctuate to quark-antiquark pairs, scatter off a target nucleus and emerge as vector mesons. The two colliding nuclei can take turns to act as targets, forming a double-slit interference pattern. Furthermore, the `which-way' information can be partially solved by the violent strong interactions in the proposed scenario, which demonstrates a key concept of quantum mechanics -- complementary principle.

References in corpus (12)

• Glauber Modeling in High Energy Nuclear Collisions
• Physics of Ultra-Peripheral Nuclear Collisions
• Attosecond double-slit experiment
• STARlight: A Monte Carlo simulation program for ultra-peripheral collisions of relativistic ions
• The wave nature of biomolecules and fluorofullerenes
• Interference in Exclusive Vector Meson Production in Heavy Ion Collisions
• A matterless double slit
• Measurement of an excess in the yield of J/$\psi$ at very low $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 2.76 TeV
• Exclusive J/ψ production in ultraperipheral collisions at the LHC: constrains on the gluon distributions in the proton and nuclei
• Coherent J/$\psi$ photoproduction in hadronic heavy-ion collisions
• Observation of Two-source Interference in the Photoproduction Reaction $AuAu\to AuAu{\rho }^0$
• J/ΨN and Psi' N total cross sections from photoproduction data: failure of vector dominance

Cited by in corpus (16)

• The Present and Future of QCD
• Tomography of Ultra-relativistic Nuclei with Polarized Photon-gluon Collisions
• The $\cos 2\varphi$ azimuthal asymmetry in ${\rho }^0$ meson production in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions
• Exploring the double-slit interference with linearly polarized photons
• Report on Progress in Physics: Observation of the Breit-Wheeler Process and Vacuum Birefringence in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• $J/\psi$ photo-production in Pb-Pb peripheral collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5 TeV
• Probing the gluon tomography in photoproduction of di-pions
• Coulomb nuclear interference effect in dipion production in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions
• Azimuthal asymmetries of muon pair production in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions
• Coherent and incoherent $J/\Psi$ photoproduction in $PbPb$ collisions at the LHC, HE -- LHC and FCC
• Regge phenomenology and coherent photoproduction of charmonium in peripheral heavy ion collisions
• The effect of initial nuclear deformation on dielectron photoproduction in hadronic heavy-ion collisions
• Probing Quantum Phenomena through Photoproduction in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Coherent J/$\psi$ photoproduction at midrapidity in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV
• Dilepton photoproduction measures the fluctuations of initial electromagnetic fields in nuclear collisions
• Rescattering effects on spin-interference for ${\rho }^0$ photoproduction in heavy-ion collisions