Energy dependence of coherent photonuclear production of J/ψ mesons in ultra-peripheral Pb-Pb collisions at $$ \sqrt{{\textrm{s}}_{\textrm{NN}}} $$ = 5.02 TeV

A bstract The cross section for coherent photonuclear production of J/ ψ is presented as a function of the electromagnetic dissociation (EMD) of Pb. The measurement is performed with the ALICE detector in ultra-peripheral Pb-Pb collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of $$ \sqrt{{\textrm{s}}_{\textrm{NN}}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> <mml:mi>NN</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> = 5.02 TeV. Cross sections are presented in five different J/ ψ rapidity ranges within | y | &lt; 4, with the J/ ψ reconstructed via its dilepton decay channels. In some events the J/ ψ is not accompanied by EMD, while other events do produce neutrons from EMD at beam rapidities either in one or the other beam direction, or in both. The cross sections in a given rapidity range and for different configurations of neutrons from EMD allow for the extraction of the energy dependence of this process in the range 17 &lt; W γ Pb , n &lt; 920 GeV, where W γ Pb , n is the centre-of-mass energy per nucleon of the γ Pb system. This range corresponds to a Bjorken- x interval spanning about three orders of magnitude: 1.1 × 10 − 5 &lt; x &lt; 3.3 × 10 − 2 . In addition to the ultra-peripheral and photonuclear cross sections, the nuclear suppression factor is obtained. These measurements point to a strong depletion of the gluon distribution in Pb nuclei over a broad, previously unexplored, energy range. These results, together with previous ALICE measurements, provide unprecedented information to probe quantum chromodynamics at high energies.

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