Evidence of Spin-Orbital Angular Momentum Interactions in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
S. Acharya, D. Adamová, A. Adler, Jonatan Adolfsson, M. M. Aggarwal, G. Aglieri Rinella, M. Agnello, N. Agrawal, Z. Ahammed, S. Ahmad, S. U. Ahn, A. Akindinov, M. Al-Turany, S. N. Alam, D. S. D. Albuquerque, D. Aleksandrov, B. Alessandro, H. M. Alfanda, R. Alfaro Molina, B. Ali, Y. Ali, A. Alici, A. Alkin, J. Alme, T. Alt, L. Altenkamper, I. Altsybeev, M. N. Anaam, C. Andrei, D. Andreou, H. A. Andrews, A. Andronic, Massimo Angeletti, V. Anguelov, C. Anson, T. Antičić, F. Antinori, P. Antonioli, R. Anwar, N. Apadula, L. Aphecetche, H. Appelshäuser, S. Arcelli, R. Arnaldi, M. Arratia, I. C. Arsene, M. Arslandok, A. Augustinus, R. Averbeck, Sizar Aziz, M. D. Azmi, A. Badalá, Y. W. Baek, S. Bagnasco, X. Bai, R. Bailhache, R. Bala, A. Baldisseri, M. Ball, Samah Balouza, R. Barbera, L. Barioglio, G. G. Barnaföldi, L. S. Barnby, V. Barret, P. Bartalini, K. Barth, E. Bartsch, F. Baruffaldi, N. Bastid, S. Basu, G. Batigne, B. Batyunya, D. Bauri, J. L. Bazo Alba, I. G. Bearden, C. Bedda, N. K. Behera, I. Belikov, A. D. C. Bell Hechavarria, F. Bellini, R. Bellwied, V. Belyaev, G. Bencedi, S. Beolè, A. Bercuci, Y. Berdnikov, D. Berényi, R. A. Bertens, D. Berzano, M. G. Besoiu, L. Betev, A. Bhasin, I. R. Bhat, M. A. Bhat, H. Bhatt, B. Bhattacharjee, A. Bianchi, L. Bianchi, N. Bianchi
Abstract
The first evidence of spin alignment of vector mesons (K^{*0} and ϕ) in heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is reported. The spin density matrix element ρ_{00} is measured at midrapidity (|y|<0.5) in Pb-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy (sqrt[s_{NN}]) of 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector. ρ_{00} values are found to be less than 1/3 (1/3 implies no spin alignment) at low transverse momentum (p_{T}<2 GeV/c) for K^{*0} and ϕ at a level of 3σ and 2σ, respectively. No significant spin alignment is observed for the K_{S}^{0} meson (spin=0) in Pb-Pb collisions and for the vector mesons in pp collisions. The measured spin alignment is unexpectedly large but qualitatively consistent with the expectation from models which attribute it to a polarization of quarks in the presence of angular momentum in heavy-ion collisions and a subsequent hadronization by the process of recombination.