Observation of Forward Neutron Multiplicity Dependence of Dimuon Acoplanarity in Ultraperipheral Pb-Pb Collisions at <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msqrt><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mi>N</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:msqrt><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>5.02</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>TeV</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math>
A. M. Sirunyan, A. Tumasyan, W. Adam, T. Bergauer, M. Dragicevic, J. Erö, A. Escalante Del Valle, R. Frühwirth, M. Jeitler, N. Krammer, L. Lechner, D. Liko, T. Madlener, I. Mikulec, F. M. Pitters, N. Rad, J. Schieck, R. Schöfbeck, M. Spanring, S. Templ, W. Waltenberger, C.-E. Wulz, M. Zarucki, V. Chekhovsky, A. Litomin, V. Makarenko, J. Suarez Gonzalez, M. R. Darwish, E. A. De Wolf, D. Di Croce, X. Janssen, T. Kello, A. Lelek, M. Pieters, H. Rejeb Sfar, H. Van Haevermaet, P. Van Mechelen, S. Van Putte, N. Van Remortel, F. Blekman, E. S. Bols, S. S. Chhibra, J. D’Hondt, J. De Clercq, D. Lontkovskyi, S. Lowette, I. Marchesini, S. Moortgat, A. Morton, Q. Python, S. Tavernier, W. Van Doninck, P. Van Mulders, D. Beghin, B. Bilin, B. Clerbaux, G. De Lentdecker, B. Dorney, L. Favart, A. Grebenyuk, A. K. Kalsi, I. Makarenko, L. Moureaux, L. Pétré, A. Popov, N. Postiau, E. Starling, L. Thomas, C. Vander Velde, P. Vanlaer, D. Vannerom, L. Wezenbeek, T. Cornelis, D. Dobur, M. Gruchala, I. Khvastunov, M. Niedziela, C. Roskas, K. Skovpen, M. Tytgat, W. Verbeke, B. Vermassen, M. Vit, G. Bruno, F. Bury, C. Caputo, P. David, C. Delaere, M. Delcourt, I. S. Donertas, A. Giammanco, V. Lemaı̂tre, K. Mondal, J. Prisciandaro, A. Taliercio, M. Teklishyn, P. Vischia, S. Wuyckens, J. Zobec, G. A. Alves
Abstract
The first measurement of the dependence of γγ→μ^{+}μ^{-} production on the multiplicity of neutrons emitted very close to the beam direction in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions is reported. Data for lead-lead interactions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.02 TeV, with an integrated luminosity of approximately 1.5 nb^{-1}, are collected using the CMS detector at the LHC. The azimuthal correlations between the two muons in the invariant mass region 8<m_{μμ}<60 GeV are extracted for events including 0, 1, or at least 2 neutrons detected in the forward pseudorapidity range |η|>8.3. The back-to-back correlation structure from leading-order photon-photon scattering is found to be significantly broader for events with a larger number of emitted neutrons from each nucleus, corresponding to interactions with a smaller impact parameter. This observation provides a data-driven demonstration that the average transverse momentum of photons emitted from relativistic heavy ions has an impact parameter dependence. These results provide new constraints on models of photon-induced interactions in ultraperipheral collisions. They also provide a baseline to search for possible final-state effects on lepton pairs caused by traversing a quark-gluon plasma produced in hadronic heavy ion collisions.