Coherent diffractive photoproduction of ρ0 mesons on gold nuclei at 200 GeV/nucleon-pair at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Author(s): Collaboration, STAR; Adamczyk, L; Adkins, JK; Agakishiev, G; Aggarwal, MM; Ahammed, Z; Ajitanand, NN; Alekseev, I; Anderson, DM; Aoyama, R; Aparin, A; Arkhipkin, D; Aschenauer, EC; Ashraf, MU; Attri, A; Averichev, GS; Bai, X; Bairathi, V; Behera, A; Bellwied, R; Bhasin, A; Bhati, AK; Bhattarai, P; Bielcik, J; Bielcikova, J; Bland, LC; Bordyuzhin, IG; Bouchet, J; Brandenburg, JD; Brandin, AV; Brown, D; Bunzarov, I; Butterworth, J; Caines, H; Sanchez, MCDLB; Campbell, JM; Cebra, D; Chakaberia, I; Chaloupka, P; Chang, Z; Chankova-Bunzarova, N; Chatterjee, A; Chattopadhyay, S; Chen, X; Chen, X; Chen, JH; Cheng, J; Cherney, M; Christie, W; Contin, G; Crawford, HJ; Das, S; Silva, LCD; Debbe, RR; Dedovich, TG; Deng, J; Derevschikov, AA; Didenko, L; Dilks, C; Dong, X; Drachenberg, JL; Draper, JE; Dunkelberger, LE; Dunlop, JC; Efimov, LG; Elsey, N; Engelage, J; Eppley, G; Esha, R; Esumi, S; Evdokimov, O; Ewigleben, J; Eyser, O; Fatemi, R; Fazio, S; Federic, P; Federicova, P; Fedorisin, J; Feng, Z; Filip, P; Finch, E; Fisyak, Y; Flores, CE; Fujita, J; Fulek, L | Abstract: The STAR Collaboration reports on the photoproduction of $\pi^+\pi^-$ pairs in gold-gold collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV/nucleon-pair. These pion pairs are produced when a nearly-real photon emitted by one ion scatters from the other ion. We fit the $\pi^+\pi^-$ invariant mass spectrum with a combination of $\rho$ and $\omega$ resonances and a direct $\pi^+\pi^-$ continuum. This is the first observation of the $\omega$ in ultra-peripheral collisions, and the first measurement of $\rho-\omega$ interference at energies where photoproduction is dominated by Pomeron exchange. The $\omega$ amplitude is consistent with the measured $\gamma p\rightarrow \omega p$ cross section, a classical Glauber calculation and the $\omega\rightarrow\pi^+\pi^-$ branching ratio. The $\omega$ phase angle is similar to that observed at much lower energies, showing that the $\rho-\omega$ phase difference does not depend significantly on photon energy. The $\rho^0$ differential cross section $d\sigma/dt$ exhibits a clear diffraction pattern, compatible with scattering from a gold nucleus, with 2 minima visible. The positions of the diffractive minima agree better with the predictions of a quantum Glauber calculation that does not include nuclear shadowing than with a calculation that does include shadowing.