Exploring the double-slit interference with linearly polarized photons

Abstract

The linearly polarized quasi-real photons from the highly Lorentz-contracted Coulomb fields of relativistic heavy ions can fluctuate to quark-antiquark pairs, scatter off a target nucleus and emerge as vector mesons. In the process, the two colliding nuclei can switch roles to act as photon emitter or target, forming a double-slit interference pattern. The product from photoproduction inherits the photon polarization states, leading to the asymmetries of the decay angular distributions. In this letter, we study the interference effect in polarization dimension from the asymmetries of the decay angular distributions for photoprodution in heavy-ion collisions and find a periodic oscillation with the transverse momentum of vector meson, which could reasonably explain the transverse momentum dependence of the 2nd-order modulation in azimuth for the ${\rho }^0$ decay observed by the STAR collaboration.

References in corpus (17)

• Glauber Modeling in High Energy 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 Elastic $\varphi$ Photoproduction at HERA
• Probing the linear polarization of photons in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions
• Coherent diffractive photoproduction of ${\rho }^0$ mesons on gold nuclei at RHIC
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• Coherent J/$\psi$ photoproduction in hadronic heavy-ion collisions
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• Coherent photoproduction of ${\rho }^0$ vector mesons in ultra-peripheral Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV
• The $\cos 2\varphi$ azimuthal asymmetry in ${\rho }^0$ meson production in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions
• Double-slit experiment at fermi scale: coherent photoproduction in heavy-ion collisions
• First measurement of coherent $\varphi$-meson photoproduction from helium-4 near threshold
• Acoplanarity of QED pairs accompanied by nuclear dissociation in ultra-peripheral heavy ion collisions

Cited by in corpus (13)

• The Present and Future of QCD
• Tomography of Ultra-relativistic Nuclei with Polarized Photon-gluon Collisions
• Mapping the Electromagnetic Fields of Heavy-Ion Collisions with the Breit-Wheeler Process
• Report on Progress in Physics: Observation of the Breit-Wheeler Process and Vacuum Birefringence in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Probing the gluon tomography in photoproduction of di-pions
• Azimuthal asymmetries of muon pair production in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions
• The effect of initial nuclear deformation on dielectron photoproduction in hadronic heavy-ion collisions
• Measurement of the impact-parameter dependent azimuthal anisotropy in coherent ${\rho }^0$ photoproduction in Pb$-$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV
• Probing Quantum Phenomena through Photoproduction in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Constraining axion-gluon coupling in monohadron processes
• Nuclear deformation effects in photoproduction of $\rho$ mesons in ultraperipheral isobaric collisions
• Influence of the residual magnetic field on the azimuthal distribution of final-state particles in photon-nuclear processes
• Rescattering effects on spin-interference for ${\rho }^0$ photoproduction in heavy-ion collisions