Rescattering effect on the measurement of K* spin alignment in heavy-ion collisions

Spin alignment of vector mesons in noncentral relativistic heavy ion collisions provides a novel probe of the global quark polarization and hadronization mechanism. In this paper, we discuss the spin alignment of a short-lived vector meson, namely K*, arising from the hadronic rescattering process using the UrQMD model. This spin alignment is not related to global quark polarization but cannot be distinguished from those arising from global quark polarization in experiments. The spin alignment parameter $\rho_{00}$ is found to deviate from 1/3 by up to -0.008 (0.03) with respect to the reaction (production) plane. These deviations are much larger than the expected signal from all the theoretical models implementing the conventional global quark polarization mechanism as well as the current experimental precision, and should be considered seriously when comparing measurements with theoretical calculations.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, accepted versio

Coherent photo-produced J/ψ/\psi and dielectron yields in isobaric collisions

Recently, significant enhancements of J/$\psi$ and $e^{+} e^{-}$ pair production at very low transverse momenta were observed by the STAR and ALICE collaboration in peripheral hadronic A+A collisions. The anomaly excesses point to evidence of coherent photon-nucleus and photon-photon interactions in violent hadronic heavy-ion collisions, which were conventionally studied only in ultra-peripheral collisions. The isobaric collisions performed at RHIC provides a unique opportunity to test the existence of coherent photon products in hadronic heavy-ion collisions. The idea is that the possible production of coherent photon products is significantly different in different collision systems due to the variations in their charge and nuclear density distributions. In this letter, we focus on the peripheral collisions and provide theoretical predictions for coherent production of J/$\psi$ and dielectron in isobaric collisions. We show that the expected yields differ significantly to perform the experimental test

Quantifying Photoproduction Corrections to J/\psi Measurements in Au+Au and Cu+Cu Collisions at sNN=200\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV

The contribution of J/\psi production from coherent and incoherent photon-induced production is calculated in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV. The yield and nuclear modification factors ($R_{AA}$) contributed by photoproduction are presented as functions of transverse momentum ($p_T$) and centrality at both mid- and forward rapidity. The $R_{AA}$ of J/\psi from photoproduction is found to be as high as 0.6 in the lowest $p_{T}$ bin ($0 < p_{T} < 1$ GeV/$c$) at mid-rapidity in 60-92\% Au+Au collisions. The $R_{AA}$ measured in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV are corrected by subtracting the calculated photoproduction contribution.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure