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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Neutron emission associated with γγ→γγ scattering in ultraperipheral collisions of heavy ions at the LHC

P. Jucha1,*, M. Kłusek-Gawenda1,†, and A. Szczurek1,2,‡

  • *Contact author: Pawel.Jucha@ifj.edu.pl
  • †Contact author: Mariola.Klusek@ifj.edu.pl
  • ‡Contact author: Antoni.Szczurek@ifj.edu.pl
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Phys. Rev. D 112, L051501 – Published 8 September, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/qf5z-wsmb

Abstract

We calculate cross sections for the production of different neutron classes 0n0n, 0nXn+Xn0n and XnXn, possible to measure in Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDCs), associated with photon-photon scattering in ultraperipheral collisions (UPC) of lead on lead. The calculations are performed for the ATLAS kinematics. Our calculations for neutron classes are tested against existing data for ρ0 production in UPC. We get a good agreement for absolute cross section as well as very good results for fractional cross section which gives confidence to the analogous calculation for diphoton production, corresponding to γγ→γγ scattering. We present both absolute as well as fractional cross sections for the different neutron classes. We also show different distributions in impact parameter, photon rapidity, transverse momentum, diphoton invariant mass, and photon rapidity difference. The shapes of the photon distributions depend on the neutron classes which we quantify in this paper. It would be valuable to test our predictions using the ATLAS main detector and the ATLAS ZDCs.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, L051501– Published 8 September, 2025
  • Received 22 July 2025
  • Accepted 12 August 2025
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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.

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