2024/06/11 by Yu Shi, Lin Chen, Shi, Yu +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2406.07634
openalex publication_date 2024/06/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a systematic investigation of lepton pair production through photon-photon fusion processes in heavy-ion collisions. It is demonstrated that the dilepton production at a given impact parameter (b_⊥) with a fixed transverse momentum imbalance (q_⊥) can be factorized into a unified formula in terms of the Wigner photon distribution of heavy nuclei. We show that this framework provides a comprehensive description of all the relevant data from RHIC to the LHC, with a strong evidence that the quasi-real photon can be radiated not only from the nucleus as a whole, standing for the coherent contribution, but also from the sub-structures inside the nucleus, representing the incoherent contribution. Further predictions are made for the anisotropies in the correlations between q_⊥, b_⊥, and the dilepton transverse momentum (P_⊥). This will help us to constrain the photon Wigner distribution which plays a crucial role to study the gluonic matter of nucleus at small-x through the diffractive photoproduction processes in heavy ion collision.