Physics Commons^™

Coherent Diffractive Photoproduction Of Ρ0 Mesons On Gold Nuclei At 200 Gev/Nucleon-Pair At The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, L. Adamczyk, James K. Adkins, G. Agakishiev, M. M. Aggarwal, Z. Ahammed, N. N. Ajitanand, I. Alekseev, D. M. Anderson, R. Aoyama, A. Aparin, D. Arkhipkin, E. C. Aschenauer, M. U. Ashraf, A. Attri, G. S. Averichev, X. Bai, V. Bairathi, A. Behera, R. Bellwied, A. Bhasin, A. K. Bhati, P. Bhattarai, J. Bielcik, J. Bielcikova, L. C. Bland, I. G. Bordyuzhin, J. Bouchet, J. D. Brandenburg, A. V. Brandin, D. Brown, Renee H. Fatemi, Suvarna Ramachandran

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

The STAR Collaboration reports on the photoproduction of π⁺π⁻ pairs in gold-gold collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV/nucleon-pair. These pion pairs are produced when a nearly real photon emitted by one ion scatters from the other ion.

We fit the π⁺π⁻ invariant-mass spectrum with a combination of ρ⁰ and ω resonances and a direct π⁺π⁻ continuum. This is the first observation of the ω in ultraperipheral collisions, and the first measurement of ρ−ω interference at energies where photoproduction is dominated by Pomeron exchange. The ω amplitude is consistent …