Confronting anomalous kaon correlations measured in Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=2.76 TeV

Abstract

This paper uses simple models to interpret recent measurements of anomalously strong correlations between neutral and charged kaon production performed at the LHC for high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Thermal models, including charge conservation effects, are found to be insufficient to explain the data for the most central collisions. More exotic conjectures involving coherent emission can reproduce the observations if 30% of the kaons are emitted from coherent sources in the most central collisions. Such coherence might be related to the melting and re-freezing of the QCD vacuum.