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arXiv · 2510.27642

From photons to dikaon -- theoretical insights into $K^+K^-$ production in nuclear collisions

Nikhil Krishna·Mariola Klusek-Gawenda·Antoni Szczurek
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Abstract

The production of charged kaon pairs in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions can proceed via photoproduction (gamma-Pomeron interaction) or via photon-photon fusion. An important contribution to this process arises from the decays of scalar, tensor and vector mesons. This study provides a consistent description of K+K- production at both the elementary level (gamma gamma -> meson -> K+K-) and the nuclear level (Pb Pb -> Pb Pb K+K-). The gamma gamma fusion cross section is compared with experimental results from Belle, TPC/Two-Gamma and ARGUS. A comparison with existing midrapidity measurements is presented, together with theoretical predictions for ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 5.02 TeV.

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Nikhil Krishna, Mariola Klusek-Gawenda, Antoni Szczurek. 2025-10-31. From photons to dikaon -- theoretical insights into $K^+K^-$ production in nuclear collisions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.27642

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