- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Incoherent particle production in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions

L. A. Harland-Lang

PDF

Phys. Rev. D 114, 014043 – Published 21 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/1d4d-1tx6

Abstract

In this paper, we present the first complete treatment of incoherent photon-initiated production in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions, focusing on the dilepton and diphoton final states. In the former case we compare to the A Toroidal LHC Apparatus ATLAS measurement of dielectron production and find that our predictions match the data very well. In the latter case we show that this contribution is too small to explain the observed broad in diphoton acoplanarity background to the purely coherent light-by-light scattering signal, after the inclusion of appropriate fiducial cuts. We in addition consider a new “quark emission” topology, which while naïvely might be expected to dominate the incoherent diphoton production channel, is in fact found to be kinematically suppressed. Finally, we revisit QCD-initiated diphoton production and issue of theoretical uncertainties in this case. We find that this again cannot explain the observed size of the higher acoplanarity background. The production mechanism leading to this background to light-by-light production, and the reason for its observed enhancement in comparison to the dilepton case, therefore remains unclear.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (47)

  1. G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Phys. Rev. C 104, 024906 (2021).
  2. G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2021) 243; 050(E) (2021) 50.
  3. G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2023) 182.
  4. G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 151802 (2023).
  5. A. Tumasyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 151803 (2023).
  6. A. M. Sirunyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 122001 (2021).
  7. A. Hayrapetyan et al. (CMS Collaboration), J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2025) 006.
  8. G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), arXiv:2504.07795.
  9. J. Adam et al. (STAR Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 052302 (2021).
  10. M. Klusek-Gawenda, V. P. Goncalves, and A. Szczurek, Phys. Lett. B 867, 139614 (2025).
  11. L. A. Harland-Lang, V. A. Khoze, and M. G. Ryskin, Eur. Phys. J. C 79, 39 (2019).
  12. L. A. Harland-Lang, M. Tasevsky, V. A. Khoze, and M. G. Ryskin, Eur. Phys. J. C 80, 925 (2020).
  13. S. Bailey and L. A. Harland-Lang, Phys. Rev. D 105, 093010 (2022).
  14. L. Harland-Lang, J. Jaeckel, and M. Spannowsky, Phys. Lett. B 793, 281 (2019).
  15. A. Bodek, arXiv:2111.03631.
  16. Y.-S. Tsai, Rev. Mod. Phys. 46, 815 (1974); 49, 421(E) (1977).
  17. K. Hencken, D. Trautmann, and G. Baur, Z. Phys. C 68, 473 (1995).
  18. L. A. Harland-Lang, V. A. Khoze, M. G. Ryskin, and W. J. Stirling, Eur. Phys. J. C 69, 179 (2010).
  19. L. A. Harland-Lang, Phys. Rev. D 107, 093004 (2023).
  20. L. A. Harland-Lang, arXiv:2506.03264.
  21. L. A. Harland-Lang, V. A. Khoze, and M. G. Ryskin, Eur. Phys. J. C 76, 9 (2016).
  22. L. A. Harland-Lang, V. A. Khoze, and M. G. Ryskin, Eur. Phys. J. C 76, 255 (2016).
  23. L. A. Harland-Lang, J. High Energy Phys. 03 (2020) 128.
  24. S. R. Klein, J. Nystrand, J. Seger, Y. Gorbunov, and J. Butterworth, Comput. Phys. Commun. 212, 258 (2017).
  25. T. Sjöstrand et al., Comput. Phys. Commun. 191, 159 (2015).
  26. A. Ogrodnik, Measurement of photon-induced processes in heavy-ion collisions with the ATLAS detector, PhD thesis, AGH-UST, Cracow, 2022.
  27. T. Cridge, L. A. Harland-Lang, A. D. Martin, and R. S. Thorne, Eur. Phys. J. C 82, 90 (2022).
  28. R. Abdul Khalek, R. Gauld, T. Giani, E. R. Nocera, T. R. Rabemananjara, and J. Rojo, Eur. Phys. J. C 82, 507 (2022).
  29. L. A. Harland-Lang, V. A. Khoze, and M. G. Ryskin, SciPost Phys. 11, 064 (2021).
  30. P. E. Bosted and V. Mamyan, arXiv:1203.2262.
  31. M. Sajjad Athar, A. Fatima, and S. K. Singh, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 129, 104019 (2023).
  32. K. J. Ozeren and W. J. Stirling, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2005) 016.
  33. Z. Bern, A. De Freitas, L. J. Dixon, A. Ghinculov, and H. L. Wong, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2001) 031.
  34. J. Alwall, R. Frederix, S. Frixione, V. Hirschi, F. Maltoni, O. Mattelaer, H.-S. Shao, T. Stelzer, P. Torrielli, and M. Zaro, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2014) 079.
  35. R. Frederix, S. Frixione, V. Hirschi, D. Pagani, H.-S. Shao, and M. Zaro, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2018) 185; 11 (2021) 85.
  36. A. Pedrak, B. Pire, L. Szymanowski, and J. Wagner, Phys. Rev. D 96, 074008 (2017); 100, 039901(E) (2019).
  37. O. Grocholski, B. Pire, P. Sznajder, L. Szymanowski, and J. Wagner, Phys. Rev. D 105, 094025 (2022).
  38. O. Grocholski, B. Pire, P. Sznajder, L. Szymanowski, and J. Wagner, Phys. Rev. D 104, 114006 (2021).
  39. L. A. Harland-Lang, V. A. Khoze, M. G. Ryskin, and W. J. Stirling, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 29, 1430031 (2014).
  40. S. Bailey, T. Cridge, L. A. Harland-Lang, A. D. Martin, and R. S. Thorne, Eur. Phys. J. C 81, 341 (2021).
  41. T. Aaltonen et al. (CDF Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 081801 (2012).
  42. https://github.com/LucianHL/SuperChic.
  43. J. C. Bernauer et al. (A1 Collaboration), Phys. Rev. C 90, 015206 (2014).
  44. L. A. Harland-Lang, A. D. Martin, R. Nathvani, and R. S. Thorne, Eur. Phys. J. C 79, 811 (2019).
  45. M. Osipenko et al. (CLAS Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 67, 092001 (2003).
  46. A. Airapetian et al. (HERMES Collaboration), J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2011) 126.
  47. V. Bertone, S. Carrazza, and J. Rojo, Comput. Phys. Commun. 185, 1647 (2014).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 114, 014043– Published 21 July, 2026
  • Received 18 November 2025
  • Accepted 8 May 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation