Measurement of $\phi(1020)$ meson production in fixed-target $\textit{p}$Ne collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 68.5 GeV

TL;DR

This paper reports the first measurement of $\, ext{phi}(1020)$ meson production in fixed-target proton-neon collisions at 68.5 GeV, providing new data on meson production cross-sections and comparing with theoretical models.

Contribution

It presents the first measurement of $\, ext{phi}(1020)$ meson production in fixed-target $p$Ne collisions at this energy, including differential cross-sections and model comparisons.

Findings

Measured $\, ext{phi}(1020)$ production cross-section as 182.7 μb/nucleon.

Double-differential cross-section data across rapidity and transverse momentum.

Pythia and EPOS4 models underestimate the experimental results.

Abstract

The first measurement of $\phi(1020)$ meson production in fixed-target $p$Ne collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=68.5$ GeV is presented. The $\phi(1020)$ mesons are reconstructed in their $K^{+}K^{-}$ decay in a data sample consisting of proton collisions on neon nuclei at rest, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $21.7 \pm 1.4$ nb$^{-1}$, collected by the LHCb detector at CERN. The $\phi(1020)$ production cross-section in the centre-of-mass rapidity range of $-1.8<y^*<0$ and transverse momentum range of $800<p_{T}<6500$ MeV/c is found to be $\sigma=182.7\pm2.7~\text{(stat.)}\pm14.1~\text{(syst)}~\mu$b/nucleon. A double-differential measurement of the cross-section is also provided in four regions of rapidity and six regions of transverse momentum of the $\phi(1020)$ meson and compared with the predictions from Pythia and EPOS4, which are found to underestimate the experimental values.