Estimate of virtual photon polarization due to the intense magnetic field in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC energies

TL;DR

This paper calculates the virtual photon polarization in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, assessing its potential as a probe for intense magnetic fields generated in heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

First numerical estimation of virtual photon polarization due to magnetic fields in heavy-ion collisions, using relativistic magnetohydrodynamics and assessing measurement feasibility.

Findings

Estimated polarization deviates from zero with low statistical significance in existing data.

Projected increase in data from future runs could enhance significance to about 1.7σ.

Magnetic field effects on virtual photon decay could serve as a probe in high-energy nuclear physics.

Abstract

We present the first numerical calculation of the virtual photon polarization and assess the feasibility of measuring the polarization via the anisotropic decay $\gamma^{*} \rightarrow \mu\mu$ using the LHC-ALICE detector. In presence of intense magnetic fields generated in high-energy non-central heavy-ion collisions that exceed the critical magnetic field intensity of quantum electrodynamics (QED), prompt virtual photons are predicted to decay anisotropically into lepton pairs, which we call virtual photon polarization. Using a relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamics model, we computed the time evolution of the magnetic field and used these results to estimate the averaged polarization by calculating the vacuum polarization under the influence of the magnetic field at specific times. The estimated polarization deviates from zero with a statistical significance of $0.07\sigma$ with the data statistics collected from 2010 to 2011 and $0.15\sigma$ with the one from 2015 to 2018. It is understandable that the magnetic field could not be detected through polarization due to low statistical significance. With the data collecting the ongoing ALICE run from 2023 to 2026, the statistics dramatically increase by the upgraded LHC and the new data processing system. Thereby we expect that the statistical significance could reach $\sim 1.7\sigma$, resulting in a promising probe for detecting the intense magnetic fields.