Observation of strong nuclear suppression in exclusive $J/\psi$ photoproduction in Au$+$Au ultra-peripheral collisions at RHIC

Abstract

We report a measurement of exclusive $J/\psi$ photoproduction in Au$+$Au ultra-peripheral collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_\mathrm{NN}}}=200$ GeV using the STAR detector. For the first time, i) the rapidity correlation between $J/\psi$ photoproduction and neutron emission from nuclear breakups has been experimentally measured; ii) nuclear suppression factors are measured for both the coherent and incoherent $J/\psi$ production. At photon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 25.0 GeV, the coherent and incoherent $J/\psi$ cross sections of Au nuclei are found to be $71\pm10\%$ and $36\pm7\%$, respectively, of that of free protons. The stronger suppression observed in the incoherent production provides a new experimental handle to study the initial-state parton density in heavy nuclei. Data are compared with theoretical models quantitatively.