The effect of hadronic scatterings on the measurement of vector meson spin alignments in heavy-ion collisions

Spin alignments of vector mesons and hyperons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions have been proposed as signals of global polarization.The STAR experiment first observed the ∧ polarization.Recently,the ALICE collaboration measured the transverse momentum {PT) and the collision centrality dependence of K*,and Φ spin alignments during Pb-Pb collisions at 1/2sNN=2.76 TeV.A large signal is observed in the low pT region of mid-central collisions for K*,while the signal is much smaller for Φ,and these have not been understood yet.Since vector mesons have different lifetimes and their decay products have different scattering cross sections,they suffer from different hadronic effects.In this paper,we study the effect of hadronic interactions on the spin alignment of K*,Φ,and p mesons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions with a multi-phase transport model.We find that hadronic scatterings lead to a deviation of the observed spin alignment matrix element p00 away from the true value for p and K*mesons(with a bigger effect on p) while the effect is negligible for the Φ meson.The effect depends on the kinematic acceptance:the observed p00 value is lower than the true value when the pseudorapidity(η) coverage is small,while there is little effect when the η coverage is large.Hence,this study provides valuable information to understand the vector meson spin alignment signals observed during the experiments.

Beam dynamics simulation of HEBT for the SSC-linac injector

The SSC-linac （a new injector for the Separated Sector Cyclotron） is being designed in the HIRFL （Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou） system to accelerate 238U34＋ from 3.72 keV/u to 1.008 MeV/u. As a part of the SSC-linac injector, the HEBT （high energy beam transport） has been designed by using the TRACE-3D code and simulated by the 3D PIC （particle-in-cell） Track code. The total length of the HEBT is about 12 meters and a beam line of about 6 meters are shared with the exiting beam line of the HIRFL system. The simulation results show that the particles can be delivered efficiently in the HEBT and the particles at the exit of the HEBT well match the acceptance of the SSC for further acceleration. The dispersion is eliminated absolutely in the HEBT. The space-charge effect calculated by the Track code is inconspicuous. According to the simulation, more than 60 percent of the particles from the ion source can be transported into the acceptance of the SSC.