Single and Double Photonuclear Excitations in Pb+Pb Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 2.76 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This paper calculates cross sections for single and double photon exchange in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC, highlighting their significance as background processes in nuclear interaction studies.

Contribution

It provides detailed cross section calculations and simulations for photonuclear processes in heavy-ion collisions at high energies.

Findings

Large cross sections for particle production at mid-rapidity.

Photon exchange processes are significant backgrounds in nuclear collision analyses.

Simulation results emphasize the importance of these processes in experimental measurements.

Abstract

Cross sections are calculated for single and double photon exchange in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC. The particle production is simulated with the DPMJET event generator. Large cross sections are found for particle production around mid-rapidity making these processes an important background to hadronic nuclear interactions at both the trigger and analysis levels.