Experimental evidence for an attractive p-$\varphi$ interaction

Abstract

This Letter presents the first experimental evidence of the attractive strong interaction between a proton and a $\varphi$ meson. The result is obtained from two-particle correlations of combined p-$\varphi \oplus \overline{\mathrm{p}}$-$\varphi$ pairs measured in high-multiplicity pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV by the ALICE collaboration. The spin-averaged scattering length and effective range of the p-$\varphi$ 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-$\varphi$ interaction. These data demonstrate that the interaction is dominated by elastic p-$\varphi$ scattering. Furthermore, an analysis employing phenomenological Gaussian- and Yukawa-type potentials is conducted. Under the assumption of the latter, the N-$\varphi$ coupling constant is found to be $g_{\mathrm{N}-\varphi }=0.14\pm 0.03(stat.)\pm 0.02(syst.)$. This work provides valuable experimental input to accomplish a self-consistent description of the N-$\varphi$ interaction, which is particularly relevant for the more fundamental studies on partial restoration of chiral symmetry in nuclear medium.

18 pages, 2 captioned figure, 1 tables, authors from page 12, published version, figures at http://alice-publications.web.cern.ch/node/7086

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