Flipped quantum interference unlocks clearer gluon maps from near-miss nuclear encounters

Scientists studying particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) usually capture what happens when atomic nuclei smash into one another at nearly the speed of light. But even when the nuclei don't collide, interesting things can happen. In a new paper just published in Physical Review Letters, members of RHIC's STAR collaboration describe a new way to use near-miss collisions at RHIC to study what's going on inside the nucleus. The approach advances the reach of RHIC, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, into the next frontier in nuclear physics—a journey into the inner workings of the building blocks of matter.

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