Extracting baryon-antibaryon strong interaction potentials from p$\barΛ$ femtoscopic correlation function

Abstract

The STAR experiment has measured $pΛ$, $\bar{p}\barΛ$, $\bar{p}Λ$, and $p\barΛ$ femtoscopic correlation functions in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV. The system size extracted for $pΛ$ and $\bar{p}\barΛ$ is consistent with model expectations and results for other pair types, while for $p\barΛ$ and $\bar{p}Λ$ it is not consistent with the other two and significantly lower. In addition an attempt was made to extract the unknown parameters of the strong interaction potential for this baryon-antibaryon ($B\bar{B}$) pair. In this work we reanalyze the STAR data, taking into account residual femtoscopic correlations from heavier $B\bar{B}$ pairs. We obtain new estimates for the system size, consistent with the results for $pΛ$ and $\bar{p}\barΛ$ pairs and with model expectations. We give new estimates for the strong interaction potential parameters for $p\barΛ$ and show that similar constraints can be given for parameters for other, heavier $B\bar{B}$ pairs.

8 pages, 7 figures