# Initial Stages 2021

Jan 10 – 15, 2021
Weizmann Institute of Science
Asia/Jerusalem timezone
See you at IS2023 in Copenhagen in June 2023

## Exploring the magnetic field in heavy-ion collisions through spin alignment measurements at ALICE

Jan 10, 2021, 7:45 PM
1h 30m
Patio (vDLCC)

### Patio

#### vDLCC

bullet talk (poster) The initial stages of heavy-ion collisions

### Speaker

Dukhishyam Mallick (National Institute of Science Education and Research (IN))

### Description

Spin alignment of vector mesons produced in non-central heavy-ion collisions could occur due to the large angular momentum and intense magnetic field expected in the initial stages of these collisions. Experimentally, vector meson polarization is observed from the angular distribution of the decay daughters with respect to a quantization axis. The study of the angular distribution of the decay products leads to a measurement of the zeroth element of the spin density matrix element $\rho_{00}$. Any deviation of the value of $\rho_{00}$ from 1/3 would indicate the presence of spin alignment. We report on recent measurements of spin alignment for K*(892)$^0$ and $\phi(1020)$ mesons at midrapidity in Pb-Pb and pp collisions at the LHC with the ALICE detector. The transverse momentum, centrality and energy dependence of $\rho_{00}$ will be shown. The results will be discussed together with those obtained for the K$^0_s$ scalar meson and obtained with respect to the random orientations of the production and event planes.

### Primary author

Dukhishyam Mallick (National Institute of Science Education and Research (IN))

### Presentation materials

 BulletTalkSA_IS2021_DM.mp4 SpinAlignment_Bullettalks_IS2021_v4.pdf