Fri·Jul 9, 2021Friday·July 9, 2021

1. 01*

   Vector-meson production and vector meson dominance

   Yin-Zhen Xu🇨🇳 · Si-Yang Chen🇨🇳 · Zhao-Qian Yao🇨🇳 · Daniele Binosi🇮🇹 · Zhu-Fang Cui🇨🇳 · Craig D. Roberts🇨🇳

   We consider the fidelity of the vector meson dominance (VMD) assumption as an instrument for relating the electromagnetic vector-meson production reaction $e+p\to e^{\prime }+V+p$ to the purely hadronic process $V+p\to V+p$. Analyses of the photon vacuum polarisation and the photon-quark vertex reveal that such a VMD Ansatz might be reasonable for light vector-mesons. However, when the vector-mesons are described by momentum-dependent bound-state amplitudes, VMD fails for heavy vector-mesons: it cannot be used reliably to estimate either a photon-to-vector-meson transition strength or the momentum dependence of those integrands that would arise in calculations of the different reaction amplitudes. Consequently, for processes involving heavy mesons, the veracity of both cross-section estimates and conclusions based on the VMD assumption should be reviewed, e.g., those relating to hidden-charm pentaquark production and the origin of the proton mass.

   ↳ hep-phhep-exhep-latnucl-ex+1EPJC(2021)·66 citations
2. 02*

   PROSPECT-II Physics Opportunities

   M. Andriamirado🇺🇸 · A. B. Balantekin🇺🇸 · H. R. Band🇺🇸 · C. D. Bass🇺🇸 · D. E. Bergeron🇺🇸 · N. S. Bowden🇺🇸 · C. D. Bryan🇺🇸 · R. Carr🇺🇸 · T. Classen🇺🇸 · A. J. Conant🇺🇸 · G. Deichert🇺🇸 · A. Delgado🇺🇸 and 50 other authors

   The Precision Reactor Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment, PROSPECT, has made world-leading measurements of reactor antineutrinos at short baselines. In its first phase, conducted at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PROSPECT produced some of the strongest limits on eV-scale sterile neutrinos, made a precision measurement of the reactor antineutrino spectrum from ${}^{235}$U, and demonstrated the observation of reactor antineutrinos in an aboveground detector with good energy resolution and well-controlled backgrounds. The PROSPECT collaboration is now preparing an upgraded detector, PROSPECT-II, to probe yet unexplored parameter space for sterile neutrinos and contribute to a full resolution of the Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly, a longstanding puzzle in neutrino physics. By pressing forward on the world's most precise measurement of the ${}^{235}$U antineutrino spectrum and measuring the absolute flux of antineutrinos from ${}^{235}$U, PROSPECT-II will sharpen a tool with potential value for basic neutrino science, nuclear data validation, and nuclear security applications. Following a two-year deployment at HFIR, an additional PROSPECT-II deployment at a low enriched uranium reactor could make complementary measurements of the neutrino yield from other fission isotopes. PROSPECT-II provides a unique opportunity to continue the study of reactor antineutrinos at short baselines, taking advantage of demonstrated elements of the original PROSPECT design and close access to a highly enriched uranium reactor core.

   ↳ hep-exnucl-exphysics.ins-detJ.Phys.G(2022)·34 citations
3. 03*

   A Large-$N$ Expansion for Minimum Bias

   Andrew J. Larkoski🇺🇸 · Tom Melia🇯🇵

   Despite being the overwhelming majority of events produced in hadron or heavy ion collisions, minimum bias events do not enjoy a robust first-principles theoretical description as their dynamics are dominated by low-energy quantum chromodynamics. In this paper, we present a novel expansion scheme of the cross section for minimum bias events that exploits an ergodic hypothesis for particles in the events and events in an ensemble of data. We identify power counting rules and symmetries of minimum bias from which the form of the squared matrix element can be expanded in symmetric polynomials of the phase space coordinates. This expansion is entirely defined in terms of observable quantities, in contrast to models of heavy ion collisions that rely on unmeasurable quantities like the number of nucleons participating in the collision, or tunes of parton shower parameters to describe the underlying event in proton collisions. The expansion parameter that we identify from our power counting is the number of detected particles $N$ and as $N\to \infty$ the variance of the squared matrix element about its mean, constant value on phase space vanishes. With this expansion, we show that the transverse momentum distribution of particles takes a universal form that only depends on a single parameter, has a fractional dispersion relation, and agrees with data in its realm of validity. We show that the constraint of positivity of the squared matrix element requires that all azimuthal correlations vanish in the $N\to \infty$ limit at fixed center-of-mass energy, as observed in data. The approach we follow allows for a unified treatment of small and large system collective behavior, being equally applicable to describe, e.g., elliptic flow in PbPb collisions and the "ridge" in pp collisions.

   ↳ hep-phhep-exhep-thnucl-ex+1JHEP(2021)·7 citations

* Reconstructed cohort: no mailing for this day survives in the archive. Papers are grouped by their submission times and arXiv's announcement cut-off, assuming announcement without delay; positions follow identifier order. Validated at ~91% exact-day agreement against the archived era.