STARlight: A Monte Carlo Simulation Program for ultra-peripheral collisions of relativistic ions

Ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs) have been a significant source of study at RHIC and the LHC. In these collisions, the two colliding nuclei interact electromagnetically, via two-photon or photonuclear interactions, but not hadronically; they effectively miss each other. Photonuclear interactions produce vector meson states or more general photonuclear final states, while two-photon interactions can produce lepton or meson pairs, or single mesons. In these interactions, the collision geometry plays a major role. We present a program, STARlight, that calculates the cross-sections for a variety of UPC final states and also creates, via Monte Carlo simulation, events for use in determining detector efficiency.超外围碰撞（Ultra-peripheral collisions, UPCs）一直是相对论重离子对撞机（Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, RHIC）与大型强子对撞机（Large Hadron Collider, LHC）上的重要研究课题。在这类碰撞中，两个对撞原子核仅通过双光子或光核相互作用发生电磁相互作用，而非强子相互作用，二者实际上会擦肩而过。光核相互作用会产生矢量介子态或更一般的光核末态，而双光子相互作用则可产生轻子-介子对或单个介子。在这类相互作用中，碰撞几何构型起到关键作用。本研究介绍一款名为STARlight的程序，它可计算多种超外围碰撞末态的反应截面，同时还能通过蒙特卡洛模拟生成事件样本，用于探测器效率的标定。

搜集汇总

背景与挑战

背景概述

该数据集提供了一个名为STARlight的蒙特卡洛模拟程序，用于研究相对论离子超外围碰撞（UPCs），这些碰撞涉及电磁相互作用（如双光子或光核相互作用）而不涉及强子碰撞。程序能计算多种UPC最终态的截面，并生成模拟事件以辅助探测器效率分析，适用于高能物理实验研究。