From photons to dikaon -- theoretical insights into $K^+K^-$ production in nuclear collisions

TL;DR

This paper offers a comprehensive theoretical analysis of K+K- meson pair production in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions, integrating elementary and nuclear level processes, and comparing predictions with experimental data.

Contribution

It provides a unified theoretical framework for K+K- production via photoproduction and photon-photon fusion, including meson decay contributions, and compares with experimental results.

Findings

Gamma gamma fusion cross sections match experimental data.

Theoretical predictions align with midrapidity measurements.

Provides detailed cross section calculations for ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions.

Abstract

The production of charged kaon pairs in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions can proceed via photoproduction (gamma-Pomeron interaction) or via photon-photon fusion. An important contribution to this process arises from the decays of scalar, tensor and vector mesons. This study provides a consistent description of K+K- production at both the elementary level (gamma gamma -> meson -> K+K-) and the nuclear level (Pb Pb -> Pb Pb K+K-). The gamma gamma fusion cross section is compared with experimental results from Belle, TPC/Two-Gamma and ARGUS. A comparison with existing midrapidity measurements is presented, together with theoretical predictions for ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 5.02 TeV.