Novel Bose-Einstein Interference in the Passage of a Fast Particle in a Dense Medium

TL;DR

This paper explores how Bose-Einstein symmetry causes collective recoil effects in dense media when high-energy particles pass through, potentially explaining observed angular correlations in high-energy nuclear collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interference mechanism based on Bose-Einstein symmetry that results in collective recoils of medium particles during high-energy particle passage.

Findings

Recoil particles tend to align along the incident particle's direction.

Constructive interference occurs in specific phase space regions.

Potential explanation for angular correlations observed in RHIC collisions.

Abstract

When an energetic particle collides coherently with many medium particles at high energies, the Bose-Einstein symmetry with respect to the interchange of the exchanged virtual bosons leads to a destructive interference of the Feynman amplitudes in most regions of the phase space but a constructive interference in some other regions of the phase space. As a consequence, the recoiling medium particles have a tendency to come out collectively along the direction of the incident fast particle, each carrying a substantial fraction of the incident longitudinal momentum. Such an interference appearing as collective recoils of scatterers along the incident particle direction may have been observed in angular correlations of hadrons associated with a high-$p_T$ trigger in high-energy AuAu collisions at RHIC.