Observation of Exclusive Electron-Positron Production in Hadron-Hadron Collisions

We present the first observation of exclusive ${e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ production in hadron-hadron collisions, using $p\overline{p}$ collision data at $\sqrt{s}=1.96\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$ taken by the run II Collider Detector at Fermilab, and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $532\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{pb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$. We require the absence of any particle signatures in the detector except for an electron and a positron candidate, each with transverse energy ${E}_{T}>5\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$ and pseudorapidity $|\ensuremath{\eta}|<2$. With these criteria, 16 events are observed compared to a background expectation of $1.9\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.3$ events. These events are consistent in cross section and properties with the QED process $p\overline{p}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}p+{e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}+\overline{p}$ through two-photon exchange. The measured cross section is ${1.6}_{\ensuremath{-}0.3}^{+0.5}(\mathrm{stat})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.3(\mathrm{syst})\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{pb}$. This agrees with the theoretical prediction of $1.71\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.01\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{pb}$.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.