STARlight: A Monte Carlo simulation program for ultra-peripheral collisions of relativistic ions

TL;DR

STARlight is a Monte Carlo simulation tool designed to calculate cross-sections and generate events for ultra-peripheral relativistic ion collisions, aiding in the study of electromagnetic interactions at RHIC and LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive Monte Carlo program for simulating ultra-peripheral collisions, including cross-section calculations and event generation for various final states.

Findings

Provides accurate cross-section calculations for UPCs.

Enables detailed event simulation for detector efficiency studies.

Supports analysis of photonuclear and two-photon interactions.

Abstract

Ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs) have been a significant source of study at RHIC and the LHC. In these collisions, the two colliding nuclei interact electromagnetically, via two-photon or photonuclear interactions, but not hadronically; they effectively miss each other. Photonuclear interactions produce vector meson states or more general photonuclear final states, while two-photon interactions can produce lepton or meson pairs, or single mesons. In these interactions, the collision geometry plays a major role. We present a program, STARlight, that calculates the cross-sections for a variety of UPC final states and also creates, via Monte Carlo simulation, events for use in determining detector efficiency.