Neutron emission in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV

Scientific paper - Original scientific paper

• Author: S. Acharya
• Author: ...
• Author: Filip Erhardt
• Author: ...
• Author: Sven Gotovac
• Author: ...
• Author: Marko Jerčić
• Author: ...
• Author: David Karatović
• Author: ...
• Author: Petra Lončar
• Author: ...
• Author: Mirko Planinić
• Author: ...
• Author: Nikola Poljak
• Author: ...
• Author: Linda Vicković
• Author: ...
• Author: N. Zurlo
• Collaboration: ALICE Collaboration
• Author's institution: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Science; (Department of Physics)
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: NATURAL SCIENCES; Physics

Abstract (english)

In ultraperipheral collisions (UPCs) of relativistic nuclei without overlap of nuclear densities, the two nuclei are excited by the Lorentz-contracted Coulomb fields of their collision partners. In these UPCs, the typical nuclear excitation energy is below a few tens of MeV, and a small number of nucleons are emitted in electromagnetic dissociation (EMD) of primary nuclei, in contrast to complete nuclear fragmentation in hadronic interactions. The cross sections of emission of given numbers of neutrons in UPCs of 208 Pb nuclei at √sNN = 5.02 TeV were measured with the neutron zero degree calorimeters (ZDCs) of the ALICE detector at the LHC, exploiting a similar technique to that used in previous studies performed at √sNN = 2.76 TeV. In addition, the cross sections for the exclusive emission of one, two, three, four, and five forward neutrons in the EMD, not accompanied by the emission of forward protons, and thus mostly corresponding to the production of 207, 206, 205, 204, 203Pb, respectively, were measured for the first time. The predictions from the available models describe the measured cross sections well. These cross sections can be used for evaluating the impact of secondary nuclei on the LHC components, in particular, on superconducting magnets, and also provide useful input for the design of the Future Circular Collider (FCC-hh).

• Keywords (english): magnet, superconductivity; excited state, energy; nucleus, fragmentation; calorimeter, forward spectrometer; dissociation, electromagnetic; nucleus, density; cross section, measured; heavy ion, scattering; nucleus; excited state; peripheral; CERN LHC Coll; ALICE; FCC-hh; FCC; 5020 GeV-cms/nucleon
• Language: english
• Publication type: Scientific paper - Original scientific paper
• Publication status: Published
• Peer review: Peer review - international
• Publication version: Published version
• Journal title: Physical Review C
• Numbering: vol. 107, no. 6, 064902
• p-ISSN: 2469-9985
• e-ISSN: 2469-9993
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.107.064902
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:217:434251
• Publication: 2023
• Document URL: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevC.107.064902
• Type of resource: Text
• Access conditions: Open access
• Public note: ©2023 CERN, for the ALICE Collaboration. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Received 6 October 2022; accepted 17 January 2023; published 5 June 2023.
• Created on: 2024-07-16 20:22:35