Open Access

Mohamed Samy Abdallah, Bassam Aboona, Jaroslav Adam, Leszek Adamczyk, Joseph R. Adams, J. K. Adkins, G. Agakishiev, Ishu Aggarwal, Madan Mohan Aggarwal, Zubayer Ahammed, A. Aitbaev, I. Alekseev, D. M. Anderson, A. Aparin, Elke Caroline Aschenauer, M. U. Ashraf, F. G. Atetalla, G. S. Averichev, Vipul Bairathi, W. Baker, Jonathan Gonzalo Ball Cap, Kenneth Barish, A. Behera, Rene Bellwied, Pratibha Bhagat, Anju Bhasin, Jaroslav Bielčík, Jana Bielčíková, I. G. Bordyuzhin, James D. Brandenburg, A. V. Brandin, Xiang-Zhou Cai, Helen Louise Caines, Manuel Calderón de la Barca Sánchez, Daniel A. Cebra, Irakli Chakaberia, Petr Chaloupka, B. K. Chan, F-H. Chang, Z. Chang, A. Chatterjee, S. Chattopadhyay, D. Chen, J. Chen, J. H. Chen, X. Chen, Z. Chen, J. Cheng, Subikash Choudhury, William Christie, Xiaoxuan Chu, Henry J. Crawford, Máté Csanád, M. Daugherity, T. G. Dedovich, Ingo Martin Deppner, Anatoly A. Derevschikov, A. Dhamija, L. Di Carlo, Lidia Didenko, Prabhupada Dixit, X. Dong, James Lucus Drachenberg, Emilie Duckworth, James C. Dunlop, Jon M. Engelage, Geary Wareham Eppley, ShinIchi Esumi, Olga Y. Evdokimov, A. Ewigleben, Kjeld Oleg Eyser, Renee H. Fatemi, F. M. Fawzi, Salvatore Fazio, C. J. Feng, Yicheng Feng, Evan Finch, Yuri V. Fisyak, A. Francisco, C. Fu, Carl A. Gagliardi, T. Galatyuk, Frank Geurts, Navagyan Ghimire, Adam Gibson, Krishan Gopal, X. Gou, David P. Grosnick, Anik Gupta, Włodzimierz Guryn, Ahmed M. Hamed, Yiding Han, Szymon Harabasz, Matthew D. Harasty, John W. Harris, Hannah Harrison, S. He, W. He, X. H. He, Y. He, S. Heppelmann, Norbert Herrmann, E. Hoffman, Lukáš Holub, C. Hu, Q. Hu, Y. Hu, H. Huang, Huan Zhong Huang, Shengli Huang, T. Huang, X. Huang, Y. Huang, Thomas J. Humanic, D. Isenhower, M. Isshiki, William W. Jacobs, Chitrasen Jena, Alexander Jentsch, Yuanjing Ji, Jiangyong Jia, K. Jiang, Xin-Yue Ju, Eleanor G. Judd, Sonia Kabana, M. L. Kabir, S. Kagamaster, Dmitry Kalinkin, K. Kang, David Kapukchyan, Kolja Kauder, H. W. Ke, Declan Keane, A. Kechechyan, M. Kelsey, Daniel P. Kikoła, B. Kimelman, D. Kincses, Ivan Kisel, A. Kiselev, S. R. Klein, Anders Garritt Knospe, H. S. Ko, L. Kochenda, A. Korobitsin, Leszek Krzysztof Kosarzewski, L. Kramarik, P. Kravtsov, Lokesh Kumar, S. Kumar, R. Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, J. H. Kwasizur, Roy Alphanso Lacey, Shaowei Lan, Jeffery M. Landgraf, Jerome Lauret, A. Lebedev, R. Lednicky, J. H. Lee, Y. H. Leung, N. Lewis, C. Li, C. Li, W. Li, X. Li, Y. Li, Y. Li, X. Liang, Y. Liang, Robert Licenik, T. Lin, Y. Lin, Michael A. Lisa, F. Liu, H. Liu, H. Liu, P. Liu, T. Liu, X. Liu, Y. Liu, Z. Liu, Tonko A. Ljubicic, W. J. Llope, Ronald S. Longacre, E. Loyd, T. Lu, N. S. Lukow, X. F. Luo, L. Ma, R. Ma, Y. G. Ma, Niseem Magdy Abdelwahab Abdelrahman, D. Mallick, S. L. Manukhov, Spyridon Margetis, Christina Markert, Howard S. Matis, J. A. Mazer, N. G. Minaev, Saskia Mioduszewski, Bedangadas Mohanty, Mriganka Mouli Mouli, Isaac A. Mooney, D. A. Morozov, A. Mukherjee, M. Nagy, J. D. Nam, Md. Nasim, K. Nayak, D. Neff, John M. Nelson, Daniel B. Nemes, M. Nie, Grigory A. Nigmatkulov, Takafumi Niida, R. Nishitani, L. V. Nogach, Toshihiro Nonaka, A. S. Nunes, Grazyna Janina Odyniec, Akio Ogawa, Saehanseul Oh, Vitaly A. Okorokov, K. Okubo, Brian S. Page, Robert Pak, J. Pan, Ashish Pandav, A. K. Pandey, Yuri Panebratsev, P. Parfenov, A. Paul, Bogdan Pawlik, Diana Pawłowska, Chris Perkins, Jan Marian Pluta, B. R. Pokhrel, J. Porter, Matthew Posik, V. Prozorova, Navneet Kumar Pruthi, Mariusz Przybycien, Jörn H. Putschke, H. Qiu, A. Quintero, Cameron Racz, Sooraj Krishnan Radhakrishnan, N. Raha, Robert L. Ray, Rosi Jan Reed, Hans Georg Ritter, Monika Robotkova, J. L. Romero, D. Roy, L. Ruan, A. K. Sahoo, Nihar Ranjan Sahoo, H. Sako, Sevil Salur, E. Samigullin, J. Sandweiss, Susumu Sato, William B. Schmidke, Norbert Schmitz, B. R. Schweid, F. Seck, Janet Elizabeth Seger, Richard Seto, Peter Seyboth, N. Shah, E. Shahaliev, Prashanth V. Shanmuganathan, M. Shao, Tianhao Shao, R. Sharma, Ashik Ikbal Sheikh, D. Y. Shen, Shusu Shi, Y. Shi, Q. Y. Shou, E. P. Sichtermann, R. Sikora, J. Singh, Subhash Singha, P. Sinha, Michael J. Skoby, N. Smirnov, Yannick Söhngen, W. Solyst, Y. Song, Harold. M. Spinka, B. Srivastava, T. D. S. Stanislaus, Maria Stefaniak, David J. Stewart, M. Strikhanov, Blair Stringfellow, Alexandre Alarcon do Passo Suaide, Michal Šumbera, X. M. Sun, X. Sun, Y. Sun, Y. Sun, Bernd Surrow, D. N. Svirida, Zachary W. Sweger, P. Szymanski, Aihong Tang, Zebo Tang, A. Taranenko, Terence J. Tarnowsky, James H. Thomas, Anthony Robert Timmins, David Tlusty, Takahito Todoroki, Mikhail V. Tokarev, C. A. Tomkiel, Stephen Trentalange, Robert E. Tribble, Prithwish Tribedy, Srikanta Kumar Tripathy, Tomas Truhlar, Barbara Antonina Trzeciak, Oleg D. Tsai, Zhoudunming Tu, Thomas Ullrich, David G. Underwood, Isaac Upsal, Gene Van Buren, Jan Vanek, A. N. Vasiliev, Iouri Vassiliev, Veronica Verkest, Flemming Videbæk, S. Vokal, Sergei Voloshin, F. Wang, G. Wang, J. S. Wang, P. Wang, X. Wang, Y. Wang, Y. Wang, Z. Wang, Jason C. Webb, Philipp Weidenkaff, Gary D. Westfall, Howard Wieman, Scott W. Wissink, Richard Witt, J. Wu, J. Wu, Y. Wu, B. Xi, Z. G. Xiao, Guannan Xie, W. Xie, H. Xu, N. Xu, Q. H. Xu, Y. Xu, Z. Xu, Z. Xu, G. Yan, C. Yang, Q. Yang, S. Yang, Y. Yang, Z. Ye, Z. Ye, L. Yi, K. Yip, Y. Yu, Hanna Paulina Zbroszczyk, Wangmei Zha, C. Zhang, D. Zhang, J. Zhang, S. Zhang, S. Zhang, Y. Zhang, Y. Zhang, Y. Zhang, Z. J. Zhang, Z. Zhang, Z. Zhang, F. Zhao, J. Zhao, M. Zhao, C. Zhou, Y. Zhou, X. Zhu, Maria Katarzyna Żurek, Maksym Zyzak

• A linearly polarized photon can be quantized from the Lorentz-boosted electromagnetic field of a nucleus traveling at ultrarelativistic speed. When two relativistic heavy nuclei pass one another at a distance of a few nuclear radii, the photon from one nucleus may interact through a virtual quark-antiquark pair with gluons from the other nucleus, forming a short-lived vector meson (e.g., ρ0). In this experiment, the polarization was used in diffractive photoproduction to observe a unique spin interference pattern in the angular distribution of ρ0 → π+π− decays. The observed interference is a result of an overlap of two wave functions at a distance an order of magnitude larger than the ρ0 travel distance within its lifetime. The strong-interaction nuclear radii were extracted from these diffractive interactions and found to be 6.53 ± 0.06 fm (197Au) and 7.29 ± 0.08 fm (238U), larger than the nuclear charge radii. The observable is demonstrated to be sensitive to the nuclear geometry and quantum interference of nonidentical particles. Polarized photon-gluon fusion reveals quantum wave interference of non-identical particles and shape of high-energy nuclei.