Volume 321 - Sixth Annual Conference on Large Hadron Collider Physics (LHCP2018) - Posters
On the spin correlations of final leptons produced in the annihilation processes $e^+ e^- \to \mu^+ \mu^-, \tau^+ \tau^-$ and in the high-energy two-photon processes $\gamma \gamma \to e^+ e^-, \mu^+ \mu^-, \tau^+ \tau^-$
V.V. Lyuboshitz,* V.L. Lyuboshitz
*corresponding author
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: 2018 October 03
Published on: 2018 December 21
Abstract
The electromagnetic processes of annihilation of $(e^+ e^-)$ pairs,
generated in high-energy nucleus-nucleus and hadron-nucleus collisions,
into heavy flavor lepton pairs are
theoretically studied in the one-photon approximation, using the technique of
helicity amplitudes . For the process $e^+e^- \rightarrow \mu^+\mu^-$, it is
shown that -- in the case of the unpolarized electron and positron -- the final
muons are also unpolarized but their spins are strongly correlated. For the
final $(\mu^+ \mu^-)$ system, the structure of triplet states is analyzed and
explicit expressions for the components of the spin density matrix and
correlation tensor are derived. It is demonstrated that here the spin correlations
of muons have the purely quantum character, since one of the Bell-type
incoherence inequalities for the correlation tensor components is always violated
( i.e. there is always one case when the modulus of sum of two diagonal components
exceeds unity ). Besides, the additional contribution of the weak interaction of lepton
neutral currents through the virtual $Z^0$ boson is considered in detail, and
it is established that, when involving the weak interaction contribution, the
qualitative character of the muon spin correlations does not change.

On the other hand, the theoretical investigation of spin structure for the
processes of lepton pair production by pairs of photons ( which, in particular,
may be emitted in relativistic heavy-ion and hadron-nucleus collisions ) is
performed as well. For the two-photon process $\gamma \gamma \rightarrow e^+ e^-$, it is found that -- quite similarly to
the process $e^+ e^- \rightarrow \mu^+ \mu^-$ -- in the case of unpolarized photons the final electron
and positron remain unpolarized, but their spins prove to be strongly correlated.
Explicit expressions for the components of the correlation tensor and for
the relative fractions of singlet and triplet states of the final $(e^+ e^-)$
system are derived. Again, here one of the Bell-type incoherence inequalities
for the correlation tensor components is always violated and, thus, spin
correlations of the electron and positron have the strongly pronounced quantum
character.

Analogous analysis can be wholly applied as well, respectively, to the annihilation process
$e^+ e^- \rightarrow \tau^+ \tau^-$ and to the two-photon processes $\gamma \gamma \rightarrow \mu^+ \mu^-$, $\gamma \gamma \rightarrow \tau^+ \tau^-$,
which become possible at considerably higher energies.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.321.0001
Open Access