English

Observing light-by-light scattering at the Large Hadron Collider

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2016-04-13 v3 High Energy Physics - Experiment Nuclear Experiment Nuclear Theory

Abstract

Elastic light-by-light scattering, γγγγ\gamma\gamma\to\gamma\gamma, is open to study at the Large Hadron Collider thanks to the large quasi-real photon fluxes available in electromagnetic interactions of protons (p) and lead (Pb) ions. The γγγγ\gamma\gamma\to\gamma\gamma cross sections for diphoton masses mγγ>5m_{\gamma\gamma} > 5 GeV amount to 105 fb, 260 pb, and 370 nb in p-p, p-Pb, and Pb-Pb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies sNN\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 14 TeV, 8.8 TeV, and 5.5 TeV respectively. Such a measurement has no substantial backgrounds in Pb-Pb collisions where one expects about 70 signal events per run, after typical detector acceptance and reconstruction efficiency selections.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1305.7142,
  title  = {Observing light-by-light scattering at the Large Hadron Collider},
  author = {David d'Enterria and Gustavo G. da Silveira},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1305.7142},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures. Corrected (increased) cross sections and yields. Conclusions unchanged. PRL Erratum to appear

R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:25:17.614Z