Confronting anomalous kaon correlations measured in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76$ TeV

Abstract

Measurements of the dynamical correlations between neutral and charged kaons in central Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76$ TeV by the ALICE Collaboration display anomalous behavior relative to conventional heavy-ion collision simulators such as AMPT, EPOS, and HIJING. We consider other conventional statistical models, none of which can reproduce the magnitude and centrality dependence of the correlations. The data can be reproduced by coherent emission from domains which grow in number and volume with increasing centrality. We show that the energy released by condensation of strange quarks may be sufficient to explain the anomaly.