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 significance above five standard deviations. We measured the inclusive fiducial cross-section to be 272−104+141(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, double- and triple-parton scattering are the dominant contributions for the measured process. © 2023, CERN.

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

Ligabue, F.
Membro del Collaboration Group
;
2023

Abstract

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 significance above five standard deviations. We measured the inclusive fiducial cross-section to be 272−104+141(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, double- and triple-parton scattering are the dominant contributions for the measured process. © 2023, CERN.
2023
Settore FIS/01 - Fisica Sperimentale
Double parton interactions; p(p)over-bar collisions; matrix-element; jet events; helac-onia; scatterings; generator; pp; Charm quarks; Large Hadron Collider; Large-hadron colliders; Meson production; Parton scattering; Proton proton collisions; Quark antiquark pair; Scattering probabilities; Standard deviation; Statistical significance
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11384/139782
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