Production of soft $e^+e^-$ Pairs in Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC by Semi-coherent Two Photon Processes

TL;DR

This paper calculates the contribution of semi-coherent two-photon processes to $e^+e^-$ pair production in heavy ion collisions at RHIC, comparing results with experimental data from PHENIX.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed calculation of semi-coherent two-photon processes and compares them with experimental data, highlighting their significance in $e^+e^-$ spectra.

Findings

Semi-coherent processes significantly contribute to $e^+e^-$ production.

Calculated spectra agree with PHENIX data within uncertainties.

Highlights importance of semi-coherent mechanisms in heavy ion collisions.

Abstract

We calculate the contribution of the two photon production process into $e^+e^-$ spectra, and compare the results with experimental data from the PHENIX detector at RHIC. We study the contribution given by ``semi-coherent" kinematics, in which one photon is relatively hard and is incoherently emitted by participating protons, while another can be soft enough to be in a coherent domain.