New probes of nuclear gluon dynamics through photoproduction of charm in inelastic ultra-peripheral Pb\unicodex2014Pb collisions with ALICE

2025/09/15 by Sigurd Nese, Nese, Sigurd
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.11814

openalex publication_date 2025/09/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

In an ultra-peripheral collision, a photon can interact with a gluon in the target nucleus and produce a pair of charm quarks, while the target nucleus breaks up (inelastic scattering). These charm quarks then fragment and are observed as open charm hadrons or vector mesons. This process has been used in e\unicodex2014p collisions to set stringent limits on the proton gluon distribution at low-x. The current measurements can provide similar constraints on the much less known nuclear gluon distributions. ALICE has measured the transverse momentum distribution of inelastically photoproduced D⁰ at midrapidity, in Pb\unicodex2014Pb collisions at √(s_NN)=5.36 TeV. The distribution is measured down to p_T=0 for the first time. The results are compared to model calculations.

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