Evidence of isospin-symmetry violation in high-energy collisions of atomic nuclei.

ABSTRACT: Strong interactions preserve an approximate isospin symmetry between up (u) and down (d) quarks, part of the more general flavor symmetry. In the case of K meson production, if this isospin symmetry were exact, it would result in equal numbers of charged (K⁺ and K^-) and neutral (K⁰ and K¯0 ) mesons produced in collisions of isospin-symmetric atomic nuclei. Here, we report results on the relative abundance of charged over neutral K meson production in argon and scandium nuclei collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 11.9 GeV per nucleon pair. We find that the production of K⁺ and K^- mesons at mid-rapidity is (18.4 ± 6.1)% higher than that of the neutral K mesons. Although with large uncertainties, earlier data on nucleus-nucleus collis

SUBMITTER: NA61/SHINE Collaboration 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11930989 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature