Aspects of Coulomb Dissociation and Interference in Peripheral Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions

Abstract

Coherent vector meson production in peripheral nucleus-nucleus collisions is discussed. These interactions may occur for impact parameters much larger than the sum of the nuclear radii. Since the vector meson production is always localized to one of the nuclei, the system acts as a two-source interferometer in the transverse plane. By tagging the outgoing nuclei for Coulomb dissociation it is possible to obtain a measure of the impact parameter and thus the source separation in the interferometer. This is of particular interest since the life-time of the vector mesons are generally much shorter than the impact parameters of the collisions.

Comments: 10 pages, 4 figures, Presented at the Workshop on Electromagnetic Probes of Fundamental Physics, Erice, Italy, 16-21 October, 2001