J/ψ and Drell-Yan cross-sections in Pb---Pb interactions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon

First results are reported on J/ψ and Drell-Yan cross-sections in Pb---Pb reactions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon. The ratio of cross-sections σ_J/ψ/σ_DY is studied as a function of the impact parameter of the collision estimated from the measured transverse energy.     

(Non)thermal aspects of charmonium production and a new look at J/ψ suppression

To investigate a recent proposal that J/ψ production in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions is of thermal origin we have reanalyzed the data from the NA38/50 Collaboration within a thermal model including charm. Comparison of the calculated with measured yields demonstrates the non-thermal origin of hidden charm production at SPS energy. However, the ratio ψ′/(J/ψ) exhibits, in central nucleus-nucleus collisions, thermal features which lead us to a new interpretation of open charm and charmonium production at SPS energy. Implications for RHIC and LHC energy measurements will be discussed.     

Observation of a threshold effect in the anomalous J/ψ suppression

We report on a search for a phase transition from ordinary nuclear matter to a state of deconfined quarks and gluons as predicted by lattice QCD calculations. A new measurement of charmonium production in Pb-Pb interactions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon agrees with our previous results and confirms the anomalous J/ψ suppression we had already observed on a significantly smaller data sample. New event selection and analysis techniques show that, for peripheral collisions, the J/ψ cross-section per nucleon-nucleon collision agrees with the precise suppression pattern inferred from a wide range of measurements extending from p-p up to S-U collisions. As the collisions become more central, the Pb-Pb cross-section exhibits a clear departure from this normal behaviour. The onset of the anomalous J/ψ suppression reported here is the first clear observation of a threshold effect in heavy ion collisions and can be considered as a strong indication of the production of a deconfined quark-gluon phase in central Pb-Pb collisions.     

Cold nuclear matter effects on J/ψ production in d-Au collisions

The medium modifications of J/ψ production in d-Au collisions at √SNN= 200 GeV are studied in the Glauber model. By means of the c.m. energy loss parameter per collision studied in Drell-Yan process,taking account of the inhomogeneous shadowing effect, we find that the initial-state energy loss effect can be ignored in d-Au collisions at mid-rapidity. Then, the final-state J/ψ absorption effect is also considered and the theoretical results are in good agreement with the recent experimental data given by PHENIX. Finally,the experimental results of J/ψ production in d-Pb collisions are also predicted at RHIC and LHC energies respectively.     

Point-like configurations in hadrons and nuclei and deep inelastic reactions with leptons: EMC and EMC-like effects

We estimate the suppression of point-like configurations in bound nucleons which can well explain the EMC effect at x>0.3, leads to small ( 1–3%) nucleon swelling, small ( 3%) non-nucleon components in the nucleus wave function, noticeably increases the magnetic moment of the deuteron. Several feasible experiments for probing point-like configurations in hadrons in hA collisions with the Drell-Yan lepton pair trigger are suggested. It is also demonstrated that the Drell-Yan pair production processes provide an effective way of measuring the superfast quark distribution up to x 2.     

Photon contribution to the “super-hard” pomeron

It is shown that direct photons provide a leading twist mechanism for diffractive jet production in which the jets carry away all of the momentum lost by the proton. Two-photon processes are thus expected to asymptotically dominate “super-hard” pomeron events in ep collisions. We report the expected rates from these events for recent ZEUS and H1 data cuts. We also estimate the direct photon contribution to the “super-hard” pomeron events observed by the CERN UA8 group for collisions. It is again argued that direct photons are the leading mechanism for these events. We find that direct photons are an appreciable fraction of the events seen by UA8.     

Latest results onJ/ψ anomalous suppression

The NA50 experiment deals with Pb-Pb collisions at 158 GeV/nucleon at the CERN SPS accelerator. TheJ/ψ production is studied through the muon decay channel, using the Drell-Yan dimuons as a reference. New results based on recent analyses, from data taken with improved experimental conditions and using different centrality estimators, are presented and compared to an update of those already obtained from previous data samples. The stepwise pattern of the anomalousJ/ψ suppression as a function of centrality, already present in these previous results, is confirmed. This observation could be a fingerprint of the theoretically predicted melting of charmonia resonances in a deconfined quark-gluon plasma. On leave of absence from York College, CUNY, New York USA On leave of absence from YerPhI, Yerevan, Armenia     

J/psi production and nuclear effects for d + Au and p + p collisions at square root of S(NN) = 200 GeV

J/psi production in d + Au and p + p collisions at square root of S(NN) = 200 GeV has been measured by the PHENIX experiment at rapidities -2.2 < y < +2.4. The cross sections and nuclear dependence of J/psi production versus rapidity, transverse momentum, and centrality are obtained and compared to lower energy p + A results and to theoretical models. The observed nuclear dependence in d + Au collisions is found to be modest, suggesting that the absorption in the final state is weak and the shadowing of the gluon distributions is small and consistent with Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi-based parametrizations that fit deep-inelastic scattering and Drell-Yan data at lower energies.     

On the pp → ppη(η′) reactions near threshold

The production rate for η′ in pp → ppη′ at rest is calculated in a covariant one boson exchange model, previously applied to study π⁰ and η production in NN collisions. The transition amplitudes for the elementary BN → η′N processes with B being the meson exchanged (B = π, σ, η, , ω and a₀) are taken to be the sum of s- and u-channels with a nucleon in the intermediate states, and an a₀ meson pole in a t-channel. The couplings of the η′ to hadrons are a factor 0.4 weaker than the respective η-hadron couplings, as suggested by a quark model and a singlet-octet mixing angle θ = −23°. The model reproduces near threshold cross sections for the quasielastic processes π⁻p → nη(η′) and pp → ppη(η′) reactions.     

Note on the angular analysis of the decay J/ψ→f(→ππ)+γ

We derive the general (4-parameter) angular decay distribution for the cascade decay J/ψ→f(→ππ)+γ and determine its angular coefficients from the absorptive and dispersive contributions of the lowest order QCD diagram.     

Magnetic behaviour of some Mn.III2.VI4 compounds and their alloys

Measurement of the magnetic susceptibility χ as a function of temperature were made on polycrystalline samples from the alloy systems Cd_1−zMn_zGa₂Se₄, Zn_1−zMn_zGa₂Se₄ and Cd_1−zMn_zIn₂Te₄ which had been subjected to various heat treatments. The 1/χ versus T curves indicated that for the Zn---Se alloys, for all values of z, samples slowly cooled to room temperature were antiferromagnetic showing ideal Curie-Weiss behaviour, but for samples quenched from 700°C the behaviour was a mixture of antiferromagnetic and spin-glass. For the Cd---Se alloys, samples from the range (0.6 < z < 1.0) showed very similar behaviour, but in the range (0 < z < 0.6) even the very slowly cooled samples showed a mixture of antiferromagnetic and spin-glass behaviour. For the Cd---Te alloys, all samples, however heat-treated, showed spin-glass form. Values of the Curie-Weiss constant Ф were determined from all of the 1/χ versus T curves, and by comparison with the T(z) phase diagrams for the different alloy systems, the values of Ф were correlated with the ordering of the Mn atoms on the cation lattice. It is shown that the experimental values of Ф can give a very convenient way of determining the type of ordering and the degree of order in such alloys.     

Evidence for the production of thermal muon pairs with masses above 1 GeV/c 2 in 158 A GeV indium-indium collisions

The yield of muon pairs in the invariant mass region 1<M<2.5 GeV/c ² produced in heavy-ion collisions significantly exceeds the sum of the two expected contributions, Drell-Yan dimuons and muon pairs from the decays of D meson pairs. These sources properly account for the dimuons produced in proton-nucleus collisions. In this paper, we show that dimuons are also produced in excess in 158 A GeV In-In collisions. We furthermore observe, by tagging the dimuon vertices, that this excess is not due to enhanced D meson production, but made of prompt muon pairs, as expected from a source of thermal dimuons specific to high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. The yield of this excess increases significantly from peripheral to central collisions, both with respect to the Drell-Yan yield and to the number of nucleons participating in the collisions. Furthermore, the transverse mass distributions of the excess dimuons are well described by an exponential function, with inverse slope values around 190 MeV. The values are independent of mass and significantly lower than those found at masses below 1 GeV/c ², rising there up to 250 MeV due to radial flow. This suggests the emission source of thermal dimuons above 1 GeV/c ² to be of largely partonic origin, when radial flow has not yet built up.     

Fading out of J/ψ color transparency in high energy heavy ion peripheral collisions

We provide predictions for the J/ψ coherent production in the peripheral heavy ion collisions at LHC and RHIC using the leading twist model of nuclear shadowing based on the QCD factorization theorem for diffraction and the HERA hard diffraction data. We demonstrate that for LHC kinematics this model leads to a bump-shape distribution in rapidity which is suppressed overall as compared to the expectations of the color transparency regime by a factor 6. This is a significantly larger suppression than that expected within the impact parameter eikonal model. Thus we show that the interaction of spatially small wave package for which the total cross section of interaction with nucleons is small is still strongly shadowed by nuclear medium in high energy processes.     

Measurement of single electron production up to 45 GeV/c transverse momentum at the CERN ISR

The production of single electrons of transverse momentum between 1.8 and 45 GeV/c is measured in pp collisions at √s=53 and 63 GeV. Contributions from ?,ω,?,ψ, ?, DD? and Drell-Yan pairs are deduced from measurements in the same apparatus.     

Dimuon and charm production in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN-SPS

Muon pair production in p-A, S-U and Pb-Pb collisions has been studied by the NA38 and NA50 collaborations at the CERN SPS. In this paper we present an analysis of the dimuon invariant mass region between the and the J/. In p-A collisions we find that, after the subtraction of the combinatorial background due to and K decays, the superposition of dimuons from semi-leptonic decays of D mesons and from the Drell-Yan process reproduces well the measured mass and transverse momentum spectra. The yield of open charm dimuons required to fit our data leads to a charm production cross section in good agreement with previous measurements. A linear extrapolation of the p-A sources with the product of the mass numbers of the projectile and target nuclei, , underestimates the dimuon yield measured in S-U and Pb-Pb collisions. The excess increases with the number of participant nucleons, and the ratio between the observed dimuon yield and the expected sources reaches a factor 2 for central Pb-Pb interactions. The kinematical distributions of the measured dimuon excess are compatible with those expected from the open charm contribution. Received: 20 December 1999 / Revised version: 4 February 2000 / Published online: 14 April 2000     

A microscopic calculation of secondary Drell-Yan production in heavy ion collisions

A study of secondary Drell-Yan production in nuclear collisions is presented for SPS energies. In addition to the lepton pairs produced in the initial collisions of the projectile and target nucleons, we consider the potentially high dilepton yield from hard valence antiquarks in produced mesons and antibaryons. We calculate the secondary Drell-Yan contributions taking the collision spectrum of hadrons from the microscopic model URQMD. The contributions from meson-baryon interactions, small in hadron-nucleus interactions, are found to be substantial in nucleus-nucleus collisions at low dilepton masses. Preresonance collisions of partons may further increase the yields. Received: 9 July 1997 / Revised version: 17 December 1997 / Published online: 10 March 1998     

Dissociation of expanding cc̄ states in heavy ion collisions

We study J/ψ suppression in AB collisions assuming that the charmonium states evolve from small, color transparent configurations. Their interaction with nucleons and nonequilibrated, secondary hadrons is simulated using the microscopic model UrQMD. The Drell-Yan lepton pair yield and the J/ψ/Drell-Yan ratio are calculated as a function of the neutral transverse energy in Pb+Pb collisions at 160 GeV and found to be in reasonable agreement with existing data.     

χ and J/ψ production in double-diffractive proton-proton collisions

It was pointed out earlier, that double-diffractive J/ψ production may serve as an important instrument to probe the odderon. However, double-diffractive production of χ′s due to pomeron-pomeron fusion, subsequently decaying into J/ψ + γ is a possibly troublesome background. Therefore, we calculate the corresponding differential cross sections for χ production and compare the obtained J/ψ yield to the rate of J/ψ directly produced by pomeron-pomeron fusion. We show that χ production is strongly suppressed. Hence, we conclude that double-diffractive exclusive J/ψ production could be the ideal process to search for the odderon.     

Low-temperature AC conductivity of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ

We report measurements of anamolously large dissipative conductivities, σ₁, in Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+δ at low temperatures. We have measured the complex conductivity of Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+δ thin films at 100–600 GHz as a function of doping from the underdoped to the overdoped state. At low temperatures there exists a residual σ₁ which scales with the T=0 superfluid density as the doping is varied. This residual σ₁ is larger than the possible contribution to σ₁ from a thermal population of quasiparticles (QP) at the d-wave gap nodes.     

J/ψ, ψ′ and related decays from dual unitarisation

The widths for about 30 decay modes of the J/ψ family are calculated from dual unitarisation. Consistency with experiment is obtained wherever such information is available.