The linearly polarized quasireal photons from the highly Lorentz-contracted Coulomb fields of relativistic heavy ions can fluctuate to quark-antiquark pairs, scatter off a target nucleus, and emerge as vector mesons. In the process, the two colliding nuclei can serve as slits, forming a Young’s double-slit experiment. In addition to the well-known double-slit interference pattern in position space, a similar interference pattern may be expected in polarization space due to the linear polarization of the colliding photons. In this paper, we investigate the interference effect in polarization space as revealed by the asymmetries of the decay angular distribution for vector meson photoprodution in heavy-ion collisions. We find a periodic oscillation pattern with transverse momentum, which can reasonably explain the second-order modulation in azimuth for the ${\rho }^0$ decay observed by the STAR Collaboration.

中文翻译：

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探索线性偏振光子的双缝干涉

来自相对论重离子的高度洛伦兹收缩的库仑场的线性极化的准现实光子可以波动成夸克-反夸克对，从目标原子核上散射，并作为矢量介子出现。在此过程中，两个碰撞的原子核可以充当狭缝，形成杨氏双狭缝实验。除了在位置空间中的众所周知的双缝干涉图案之外，由于碰撞光子的线性偏振，在偏振空间中可能会出现类似的干涉图案。在本文中，我们研究了在重离子碰撞中矢量介子光电产品衰减角分布的不对称性所揭示的极化空间中的干涉效应。我们发现一个带有横向动量的周期性振荡模式，${\rho }^0$ STAR合作社观察到的衰变。