Evidence of Spin-Interference Effects in Exclusive J/ψ→e^{+}e^{-} Photoproduction in Ultraperipheral Heavy-Ion Collisions.

Authors

B E Aboona, J Adam, L Adamczyk, I Aggarwal, M M Aggarwal, Z Ahammed, A K Alshammri, E C Aschenauer, S Aslam, J Atchison, V Bairathi, X Bao, P Barik, K Barish, S Behera, R Bellwied, P Bhagat, A Bhasin, S Bhatta, S R Bhosale, J Bielcik, J Bielcikova, J D Brandenburg, C Broodo, X Z Cai, H Caines, M Calderón de la Barca Sánchez, D Cebra, J Ceska, I Chakaberia, P Chaloupka, Y S Chang, Z Chang, A Chatterjee, D Chen, J H Chen, L Chen, Q Chen, W Chen, Z Chen, J Cheng, Y Cheng, W Christie, X Chu, S Corey, H J Crawford, M Csanád, G Dale-Gau, A Das, D De Souza Lemos, I M Deppner, A Deshpande, A Dhamija, A Dimri, P Dixit, X Dong, J L Drachenberg, E Duckworth, J C Dunlop, Y S El-Feky, J Engelage, G Eppley, S Esumi, O Evdokimov, O Eyser, B Fan, Y Fang, R Fatemi, S Fazio, H Feng, Y Feng, E Finch, Y Fisyak, F A Flor, B Fu, C Fu, T Fu, C A Gagliardi, T Galatyuk, T Gao, Y Gao, G Garcia, F Geurts, A Gibson, A Giri, K Gopal, X Gou, D Grosnick, A Gu, J Gu, A Gupta, W Guryn, A Hamed, R J Hamilton, J Han, X Han, S Harabasz, M D Harasty, J W Harris, H Harrison-Smith, L B Havener, X H He, Y He, N Herrmann, L Holub, C Hu, Q Hu, Y Hu, H Huang, H Z Huang, S L Huang, T Huang, Y Huang, Y Huang, Y Huang, M Isshiki, W W Jacobs, A Jalotra, C Jena, A Jentsch, Y Ji, J Jia, X Jiang, C Jin, Y Jin, N Jindal, X Ju, E G Judd, S Kabana, D Kalinkin, J Kang, K Kang, A R Kanuganti, D Kapukchyan, K Kauder, D Keane, M Kesler, A Khanal, A Khanal, Y V Khyzhniak, D P Kikoła, J Kim, D Kincses, I Kisel, A Kiselev, A G Knospe, J Kołaś, Y Kong, B Korodi, L K Kosarzewski, L Kumar, M C Labonte, R Lacey, J M Landgraf, C Larson, J Lauret, A Lebedev, J H Lee, Y H Leung, C Li, D Li, H-S Li, H Li, H Li, H Li, W Li, X Li, X Li, Y Li, Z Li, Z Li, X Liang, R Licenik, T Lin, Y Lin, M A Lisa, C Liu, G Liu, H Liu, L Liu, L Liu, Z Liu, Z Liu, T Ljubicic, O Lomicky, E M Loyd, T Lu, J Luo, X F Luo, L Ma, R Ma, Y G Ma, N Magdy, D Mallick, R Manikandhan, C Markert, O Matonoha, K Menduli, K Mi, S Mioduszewski, B Mohanty, B Mondal, M M Mondal, I Mooney, J Mrazkova, M I Nagy, C J Naim, A S Nain, J D Nam, M Nasim, H Nasrulloh, J M Nelson, M Nie, G Nigmatkulov, T Niida, T Nonaka, G Odyniec, A Ogawa, S Oh, K Okubo, B S Page, M Pal, S Pal, A Pandav, A Panday, A K Pandey, T Pani, A Paul, S Paul, D Pawlowska, C Perkins, S Ping, J Pluta, I D Ponce Pinto, M Posik, E Pottebaum, S Prodhan, T L Protzman, A Prozorov, V Prozorova, N K Pruthi, M Przybycien, J Putschke, Y Qi, Z Qin, H Qiu, S K Radhakrishnan, A Rana, R L Ray, R Reed, C W Robertson, M Robotkova, M A Rosales Aguilar, D Roy, P Roy Chowdhury, L Ruan, A K Sahoo, N R Sahoo, H Sako, S Salur, S S Sambyal, D T Samuel, J K Sandhu, S Sato, B C Schaefer, N Schmitz, F-J Seck, J Seger, R Seto, P Seyboth, N Shah, P V Shanmuganathan, T Shao, M Sharma, N Sharma, R Sharma, S R Sharma, A I Sheikh, D Shen, D Y Shen, K Shen, S Shi, Y Shi, Shilpa, E Shulga, F Si, J Singh, S Singha, P Sinha, M J Skoby, N Smirnov, Y Söhngen, Y Song, T D S Stanislaus, M Stefaniak, Y Su, M Sumbera, X Sun, Y Sun, B Surrow, M Svoboda, Z W Sweger, A C Tamis, A H Tang, Z Tang, T Tarnowsky, J H Thomas, A R Timmins, D Tlusty, D Torres-Valladares, S Trentalange, P Tribedy, S K Tripathy, T Truhlar, B A Trzeciak, O D Tsai, C Y Tsang, Z Tu, J E Tyler, T Ullrich, D G Underwood, G Van Buren, J Vanek, I Vassiliev, F Videbæk, S A Voloshin, F Wang, G Wang, G Wang, J S Wang, J Wang, K Wang, X Wang, Y Wang, Y Wang, Y Wang, Z Wang, Z Wang, Z Wang, Z Y Wang, J C Webb, P C Weidenkaff, G D Westfall, D Wielanek, H Wieman, G Wilks, S W Wissink, R Witt, C P Wong, J Wu, X Wu, X Wu, X Wu, A J Wątroba, B Xi, Y Xiao, Z G Xiao, G Xie, W Xie, H Xu, N Xu, Q H Xu, X Xu, Y Xu, Y Xu, Y Xu, Y Xu, Z Xu, Z Xu, G Yan, Z Yan, C Yang, Q Yang, S Yang, Y Yang, Z Ye, Z Ye, L Yi, Y Yu, W Yuan, H Zbroszczyk, W Zha, C Zhang, D Zhang, J Zhang, K Zhang, L Zhang, S Zhang, W Zhang, X Zhang, Y Zhang, Y Zhang, Y Zhang, Y Zhang, Z Zhang, Z Zhang, F Zhao, J Zhao, S Zhou, Y Zhou, C Zhu, X Zhu, M Zurek, M Zyzak, STAR Collaboration

Published in

Physical review letters. Volume 136. Issue 24. Pages 242302. Jun 19, 2026.

Abstract

We report the first evidence of spin interference in exclusive J/ψ→e^{+}e^{-} photoproduction in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions at STAR at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200  GeV. In Au+Au collisions, a negative cos(2ϕ) modulation is found for p_{T}<120  MeV/c with a significance of 3.2σ, while the isobar data (Ru+Ru, Zr+Zr) show a consistent negative modulation with a significance of 1.9σ, opposite in sign to that in ρ^{0}→π^{+}π^{-} photoproduction. This establishes for the first time that the interference sign is controlled by the spin structure of the final-state daughters, resolving the ambiguity present in the all-boson ρ^{0} channel. The compact J/ψ probes gluon distributions at perturbative scales, resulting in a weaker modulation and providing stringent constraints on color glass condensate calculations. These findings demonstrate that spin-dependent interference in heavy vector mesons provides a new, experimentally accessible handle on gluon structure beyond traditional cross-section measurements.

PMID:
42412437
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Jul 2026.

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