Observation of triple J/ψ meson production in proton-proton collisions

Protons consist of three valence quarks, two up-quarks and one down-quark, held together by gluons and a sea of quark-antiquark pairs. Collectively, quarks and gluons are referred to as partons. In a proton-proton collision, typically only one parton of each proton undergoes a hard scattering – refe...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Tumasyan, Armen, Silveira, Gustavo Gil da, Bernardes, César Augusto, CMS Collaboration
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:Brasil
Institución:Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)
Repositorio:Repositório Institucional da UFRGS
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:www.lume.ufrgs.br:10183/262343
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10183/262343
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Aceleradores de partículas
Colisões proton-proton
Mesons
Descripción
Sumario:Protons consist of three valence quarks, two up-quarks and one down-quark, held together by gluons and a sea of quark-antiquark pairs. Collectively, quarks and gluons are referred to as partons. In a proton-proton collision, typically only one parton of each proton undergoes a hard scattering – referred to as single-parton scattering – leaving the remainder of each proton only slightly disturbed. Here, we report the study of double- and triple-parton scatterings through the simultaneous production of three J/ψ mesons, which consist of a charm quark-antiquark pair, in proton-proton collisions recorded with the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. We observed this process – reconstructed through the decays of J/ψ mesons into pairs of oppositely charged muons – with a statistical signifcance above fve standard deviations. We measured the inclusive fducial cross-section to be 272+141 −104 (stat) ± 17 (syst)fb, and compared it to theoretical expectations for triple-J/ψ meson production in single-, double- and triple-parton scattering scenarios. Assuming factorization of multiple hard-scattering probabilities in terms of single-parton scattering cross-sections, doubleand triple-parton scattering are the dominant contributions for the measured process.