Gluon Condensation as a Unifying Mechanism for Special Spectra of Cosmic Gamma Rays and Low-Momentum Pion Enhancement at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

Decoding the internal structure of the proton is a fundamental challenge in physics. Historically, any new discovery about the proton has fuelled advances in several scientific fields. We have reported that gluons inside the proton accumulate near the critical momentum due to chaotic phenomena, forming gluon condensation. Surprisingly, the pion distribution predicted by this gluon distribution for the production of high-energy proton collisions could answer two puzzles in astronomy and high-energy physics. We find that during ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray collisions, gluon condensation may abruptly produce a large number of low-momentum pions, whose electromagnetic decays have the typical breakout properties appearing in various cosmic gamma-ray spectra. On the other hand, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is well below the cosmic ray energy scale, also shows weak but recognisable signs of gluon condensation, which had been mistaken for BEC pions. The connection between these two phenomena, which occur at different scales in the Universe, supports the existence of a new structure within the proton-gluon condensation.