Confronting anomalous kaon correlations measured in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76$ TeV

TL;DR

This paper investigates unexpected kaon correlation patterns in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV, suggesting coherent emission and strange quark condensation as potential explanations for the anomalies.

Contribution

It demonstrates that conventional models cannot explain the observed correlations, proposing a novel coherent emission mechanism linked to strange quark condensation.

Findings

Conventional models fail to reproduce the correlation magnitude and centrality dependence.

Coherent emission from growing domains explains the data.

Strange quark condensation energy may account for the anomalies.

Abstract

Measurements of the dynamical correlations between neutral and charged kaons in central Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76$ TeV by the ALICE Collaboration display anomalous behavior relative to conventional heavy-ion collision simulators such as AMPT, EPOS, and HIJING. We consider other conventional statistical models, none of which can reproduce the magnitude and centrality dependence of the correlations. The data can be reproduced by coherent emission from domains which grow in number and volume with increasing centrality. We show that the energy released by condensation of strange quarks may be sufficient to explain the anomaly.