Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: There is growing evidence that high-energy scattering processes involving nuclei can offer unique insights into the many-body correlations present in nuclear ground states, in particular those of deformed nuclei. These processes involve, for instance, the collective anisotropic flows in heavy-ion collisions, or the diffractive production of vector mesons in photo-nuclear ( $$\gamma A$$ γ A ) interactions. In this paper, we use a classical approximation and simple analytical models in order to exhibit characteristic and universal features of ground-state correlation functions that result from the presence of a deformed intrinsic state. In the case of a small axial quadrupole deformation, we show that the random rotation of the intrinsic density of the nucleus leads to a specific quadrupole modulation of the lab-frame two-body density as a function of the relative azimuthal angle. As a phenomenological, albeit academic application, we analyze the diffractive production of vector mesons in high-energy $$\gamma +^8$$ γ + 8 Be collisions. This demonstrates with the simplest deformed nucleus how the two-body correlations impact the |t| dependence of the incoherent cross sections.
Source: The European Physical Journal A
Authors: Jean-Paul Blaizot, Giuliano Giacalone
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,990
Funders: CERN, Nuclear Physics
OpenAlex ID: W4414601845