Maximum entanglement sheds new light on the creation of particles

Physicists at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University (SBU) have shown that particles produced by a collimated spray called jets hold information about the origins of subatomic particle smashups. The study was recently published as an editor’s suggestion in the journal’s physics review letter.

“Despite extensive research, the relationship between the initial conditions of jets and their final particle distribution remains elusive,” says Charles Joseph Naim, a researcher at the SBU Department of Physics and Astronomy Center for Nuclear Sciences (CFNS). “For the first time, this study establishes a direct link between the earliest “entanglement entropy” of the jet layer and the particles that the jet evolves. ”

This evidence arises from the analysis of jet particles born from proton proton collisions captured by atlas experiments at the large hadron corridor, a circular corridor of the 17-mile Circum Reichm Reference at CERN, a European nuclear research institute. In these powerful collisions, the individual components of collision protons, known as Quarks and Gluons, are scattered around each other, sometimes knocking freely with a huge amount of energy. However, quarks cannot remain free for a long time. The gluons that usually bring them together begin to split and reconnect through a branching process called fragmentation. The result is many new composite particles made of pairs of quarks or triple angles (corresponding as hadrons).

“We wanted to see if the distribution of hadrons in jets was affected by the level of quark and glue entanglement at the time the jets first formed,” said Abhay Deshpande, a well-known professor at SBU. Deshpande is co-appointed as director of science at Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a new nuclear physics research facility under construction at Brookhaven Lab, and is currently the interim assistant lab director of nuclear and particle physics at Brookhaven Lab.

This analysis was motivated in part by previous research by research co-authors Zhoudunming Tu and Dmitri Kharzeev, and by previous research by SBU faculty roles and appointments at Brookhaven Lab. Their work, published last year, revealed the relationship between quark and groove entanglement within protons and the overall distribution of particles emerging from the smashup of proton and electron protons. In that work, the higher the entanglement entropy between the quark and gluon, the greater the entropy or “mistress” in the distribution of the particles produced.

“This previous study revealed the greatest entanglement between quarks and gluons within high-energy protons,” Tu said. “In this work, we will extend this approach to jet production. Jets are formed from fragmentation of these quarks and gluons. Are there also “large entanglements” among these fragmented high-energy quarks and gluons? ”

This greatest entanglement state between the quark and gluon of jet formation predicts the relationship between the jet fragmentation function of the hadrons emerging from the jet and entropy or impairment. This entropy is observed as a number of different types of hadrons (mainly pions, kaons, and protons). Conversely, the correlation between this observation of high-grade disturbances between jet particles and initial fragmentation predictions is evidence of this greatest entanglement in fragmenting quarks and gluons.

When scientists looked at data from proton proton collisions in LHC, the distribution of jet hadrons was consistent with this prediction based on the largest entanglement at the earliest stage of the jet layer.

“This new study provides a new quantum-level perspective on the fragmentation process,” says Kharzeev.

“This study paves the way for further investigation into how Quantum Entanglement will affect the formation of Hadrons, including electron ion corridors, in the future,” added Jaydeep Datta, co-author of Study, a research scientist at SBU.

EIC is actively involved with many Stony Brook faculty and students, and promises unprecedented accuracy when studying quantum entanglement effects in high-energy collisions. In particular, EIC compares jets emerging from electron proton collisions with jets emerging from electron nuclear collisions. These experiments investigate how much quantum effects are extended within the nucleus, potentially modifying the microcosm within the proton.