Measurement of the Low-Energy Antideuteron Inelastic Cross Section
Özet
In this Letter, we report the first measurement of the inelastic cross section for antideuteron-nucleus
interactions at low particle momenta, covering a range of 0.3 ≤ p < 4 GeV=c. The measurement is carried
out using p-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon–nucleon pair of ffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
sNN p ¼ 5.02 TeV,
recorded with the ALICE detector at the CERN LHC and utilizing the detector material as an absorber for
antideuterons and antiprotons. The extracted raw primary antiparticle-to-particle ratios are compared to the
results from detailed ALICE simulations based on the GEANT4 toolkit for the propagation of (anti)particles
through the detector material. The analysis of the raw primary (anti)proton spectra serves as a benchmark
for this study, since their hadronic interaction cross sections are well constrained experimentally. The first
measurement of the inelastic cross section for antideuteron-nucleus interactions averaged over the ALICE
detector material with atomic mass numbers hAi ¼ 17.4 and 31.8 is obtained. The measured inelastic cross
section points to a possible excess with respect to the Glauber model parametrization used in GEANT4 in the
lowest momentum interval of 0.3 ≤ p < 0.47 GeV=c up to a factor 2.1. This result is relevant for the
understanding of antimatter propagation and the contributions to antinuclei production from cosmic ray
interactions within the interstellar medium. In addition, the momentum range covered by this measurement
is of particular importance to evaluate signal predictions for indirect dark-matter searches.
Koleksiyonlar
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