Light-by-light scattering in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions -- new possibilities

Abstract

Light-by-light scattering is a relatively new area of experimental physics. Our recent, theoretical research shows that studying two photon measurements in regions with lower transverse momentum ($p_{t,{\hat{I}}^3}$) and invariant mass ($M_{{\hat{I}}^3{\hat{I}}^3}$) allows us to observe not only the main contribution of photon scattering, known as fermionic loops but also mechanisms like the VDM-Regge (double-photon hadronic fluctuation). In addition, diphoton measurements at low diphoton masses are crucial for studies of light meson resonance contributions in ${\hat{I}}^3{\hat{I}}^3\to {\hat{I}}^3{\hat{I}}^3$ scattering. We also focus on the interference between different contributions. For future experiments with the ALICE FoCal and ALICE-3 detectors, we have calculated background contamination and have explored possibilities to minimize their impact.

9 pages, 8 figures, a talk given by A. Szczurek at the Zakopane 2024 Conference on Nuclear Physics, Zakopane, Poland, August 2024