Observation of light-by-light scattering in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions with the ATLAS detector

ATLAS Collaboration, Alan Watson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

40 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

This Letter describes the observation of the light-by-light scattering process, γγ→γγ, in Pb+Pb collisions at √sNN=5.02 TeV. The analysis is conducted using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.73 nb-1, collected in November 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. Light-by-light scattering candidates are selected in events with two photons produced exclusively, each with transverse energy ETγ>3 GeV and pseudorapidity |ηγ|<2.4, diphoton invariant mass above 6 GeV, and small diphoton transverse momentum and acoplanarity. After applying all selection criteria, 59 candidate events are observed for a background expectation of 12±3 events. The observed excess of events over the expected background has a significance of 8.2 standard deviations. The measured fiducial cross section is 78±13(stat)±7(syst)±3(lumi) nb.

Original languageEnglish
Article number052001
Number of pages21
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume123
Issue number5
Early online date31 Jul 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Aug 2019

Bibliographical note

28 pages in total, author list starting page 12, 3 figures, 0 tables, submitted to PRL. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2018-19

Keywords

  • hep-ex
  • nucl-ex

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physics and Astronomy(all)

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