English

Spatial resolution of dijet photoproduction in near-encounter ultraperipheral nuclear collisions

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2024-10-04 v2

Abstract

We present next-to-leading order perturbative QCD predictions for inclusive dijet photoproduction in ultra-peripheral nucleus-nucleus collisions (UPCs) within the impact-parameter dependent equivalent photon approximation. Taking into account the finite size of both the photon-emitting and the target nucleus, we show that this process is sensitive to the transverse-plane geometry of the UPC events. We show that this leads to a sizeable, 20-40% effect for large values of the zγz_\gamma variable in the dijet photoproduction cross section in lead-lead UPCs at 5.02 TeV compared to the widely-used pointlike approximation where the nuclear radius is accounted for only as a sharp cut-off in the photon flux calculation. This resolution of the spatial degrees of freedom is a result of having high-transverse-momentum jets in the final state, which at the large-zγz_\gamma kinematics requires a highly energetic photon in the initial state, thus biasing the collisions to small impact-parameter ''near-encounter'' configurations. We further discuss the role of the forward-neutron event-class selection in isolating the photonuclear cross section in the nucleus-nucleus collisions, and employ the needed electromagnetic breakup survival factor in our predictions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.09731,
  title  = {Spatial resolution of dijet photoproduction in near-encounter ultraperipheral nuclear collisions},
  author = {Kari J. Eskola and Vadim Guzey and Ilkka Helenius and Petja Paakkinen and Hannu Paukkunen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.09731},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

13 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in Physical Review C