Isolation of photon-nuclear interaction backgrounds in the search for the chiral magnetic effect in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
Jing Gu, Jinhui Chen, Jie Zhao
Abstract
The chiral magnetic effect (CME) in relativistic heavy-ion collisions originates from a chirality imbalance among quarks within metastable QCD vacuum domains and may be linked to $CP$ violation, which is believed to play a crucial role in the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. Over the past two decades, extensive experimental efforts at RHIC and the LHC have been devoted to the search for evidence of the CME. Recent advances have greatly improved our understanding of background contributions that can mimic CME-like signals. In particular, analyses utilizing techniques designed to suppress flow-related backgrounds indicate that the CME signal at RHIC, if present, is small. To further investigate potential background sources, particularly those associated with strong electromagnetic fields, we estimate the contribution from coherent photon-nuclear interactions. These interactions are driven by intense electromagnetic fields produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, with cross sections that scale with the field strength. Notably, the polarization of the incident photons is aligned with the electric field, which is oriented along the impact parameter direction and perpendicular to the magnetic field. Consequently, such processes can generate charge-dependent correlations that mimic key features of the CME signal, yet originate from different physics mechanisms and are distinct from flow-induced backgrounds. In this study, we quantitatively assess the influence of these coherent photon-nuclear interactions on the precision measurement of the CME, aiming to improve the separation of the genuine CME signal from these background contributions.