Observation of Two-Source Interference in the Photoproduction Reaction AuAu-->AuAu rho
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Abelev-2009-Observation of Two-S.pdf
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Author(s)
Surrow, Bernd
Sakuma, Tai
Leight, William Axel
Kocoloski, Adam Philip
Jones, Christopher LaDon
Corliss, Ross Cameron
Betancourt, Michael Joseph
Balewski, Jan T.
Surrow, Bernd
Walker, Matthew H
Date Issued
March 2009
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
STAR Collaboration et al. “Observation of Two-Source Interference in the Photoproduction Reaction AuAu-->AuAu rho.” Physical Review Letters 102.11 (2009): 112301.
© 2009 The American Physical Society.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In ultraperipheral relativistic heavy-ion collisions, a photon from the electromagnetic field of one nucleus can fluctuate to a quark-antiquark pair and scatter from the other nucleus, emerging as a ρ[superscript 0]. The ρ[superscript 0] production occurs in two well-separated (median impact parameters of 20 and 40 F for the cases considered here) nuclei, so the system forms a two-source interferometer. At low transverse momenta, the two amplitudes interfere destructively, suppressing ρ[superscript 0] production. Since the ρ[superscript 0] decays before the production amplitudes from the two sources can overlap, the two-pion system can only be described with an entangled nonlocal wave function, and is thus an example of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox. We observe this suppression in 200 GeV per nucleon-pair gold-gold collisions. The interference is 87%±5%(stat.)±8%(syst.) of the expected level. This translates into a limit on decoherence due to wave function collapse or other factors of 23% at the 90% confidence level.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Nuclear Science
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DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.112301
