Abnormal dilepton yield from parity breaking in dense nuclear matter

At finite density parity can be spontaneously broken in strong interactions with far reaching implications. In particular, a time-dependent pseudoscalar background would modify QED by adding a Chern-Simons term to the lagrangian. As a striking consequence we propose a novel explanation for the dilepton excess observed in heavy ion collisions at low invariant masses. The presence of local parity breaking due to a time-dependent pseudoscalar condensate substantially modifies the dispersion relation of photons and vector mesons propagating in such a medium, changing the $\rho$ spectral function and resulting in a potentially large excess of dileptons with respect to the predictions based in a `cocktail' of known processes.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. Contributed to the International Conference on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum IX, Madrid, August 2010, to appear in the proceeding

Pensament i ciència als Països Catalans

Pensament i Ciència als països catalan

Searching for P- and CP-odd effects in heavy ion collisions

In this talk we will summarize the main results from our recent work concerning the possibility that a new metastable phase occurs in some heavy ion collisions (HIC). This phase would be characterized by the breaking of two characteristic symmetries of strong interactions; namely P and CP. We investigate the experimental consequences of parity breaking in such a situation and propose suitable observables to elucidate the presence this phenomenon.Comment: Talk presented at the XI Conference on Quark Confinement and Hadron Spectrum, Saint Petersburg, September 201

Analysis of dilepton angular distributions in a parity breaking medium

We investigate how local parity breaking (LPB) due to large topological fluctuations may affect hadron physics. A distorted dispersion relation is derived for the lightest vector mesons $\rho$ and $\omega$. They are characterised by a mass splitting depending on their polarization. We present a detailed analysis of the angular distribution associated to the lepton pairs created from these mesons searching for polarization dependencies. Two angular variables are found to carry the main information related to the parity breaking effect. Possible signatures for experimental detection of local parity breaking that could potentially be seen by the PHENIX and STAR collaborations are discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure