Authors
Abdallah, M. S. ; Abooona, B. E. ; Adam, J. ; Adamczyk, L.; Adams, J. R. ; Adkins, J.; Agakishiev, G.; Aggarwal, I.; Aggarwal, M.; Ahammed, Z; Zurek, M.; Spinka, H. M.; Underwood, D.G.
Abstract
A linearly polarized photon can be quantized from the Lorentz-boosted electromagnetic field of a nucleus traveling at ultra-relativistic speed. When tworelativistic heavy nuclei pass one another at a distance of a few nuclear radii,the photon from one nucleus may interact through a virtual quark-antiquarkpair with gluons from the other nucleus forming a short-lived vector meson(e.g. 0). In this experiment, the polarization was utilized in diffractive photoproduction to observe a unique spin interference pattern in the angular distribution of 0 + decays. The observed interference is a result of an overlap of two wave functions at a distance an order of magnitude larger than the0travel distance within its lifetime. The strong-interaction nuclear radii wereextracted from these diffractive interactions, and found to be 6.53 0.06 fm(197Au) and 7.29 0.08 fm (238U), larger than the nuclear charge radii. Theobservable is demonstrated to be sensitive to the nuclear geometry and quantum interference of non-identical particles.