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Evidence for light-by-light scattering in heavy-ion collisions with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Publication . ATLAS collaboration (2847 authors); Aguilar-Saavedra, Juan Antonio; Amor Dos Santos, Susana Patricia; Anjos, Nuno; Araque, Juan Pedro; Carvalho, João; Castro, Nuno Filipe; Conde Muiño, Patricia; Da Cunha Sargedas De Sousa, Mario Jose; Fiolhais, Miguel; Galhardo, Bruno; Gomes, Agostinho; Gonçalo, Ricardo; Jorge, Pedro; Machado Miguens, Joana; Maio, Amélia; Maneira, José; Oleiro Seabra, Luis Filipe; Onofre, António; Pedro, Rute; Santos, Helena; Saraiva, João; Silva, José; Tavares Delgado, Ademar; Veloso, Filipe; Wolters, Helmut

Light-by-light scattering ($\gamma\gamma\rightarrow\gamma\gamma$) is a quantum-mechanical process that is forbidden in the classical theory of electrodynamics. This reaction is accessible at the Large Hadron Collider thanks to the large electromagnetic field strengths generated by ultra-relativistic colliding lead (Pb) ions. Using 480 $\mu$b$^{-1}$ of Pb+Pb collision data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV by the ATLAS detector, the ATLAS Collaboration reports evidence for the $\gamma\gamma\rightarrow\gamma\gamma$ reaction. A total of 13 candidate events are observed with an expected background of 2.6$\pm$0.7 events. After background subtraction and analysis corrections, the fiducial cross section of the process $\textrm{Pb+Pb}\,(\gamma\gamma)\rightarrow \textrm{Pb}^{(\ast)}\textrm{+}\textrm{Pb}^{(\ast)}\,\gamma\gamma$, for photon transverse energy $E_{\mathrm{T}}>$3 GeV, photon absolute pseudorapidity $|\eta|<$2.4, diphoton invariant mass greater than 6 GeV, diphoton transverse momentum lower than 2 GeV and diphoton acoplanarity below 0.01, is measured to be 70 $\pm$ 24 (stat.) $\pm$ 17 (syst.) nb, which is in agreement with Standard Model predictions.

2017-08-14Journal article

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