Spin alignment of vector mesons in heavy-ion collisions provides a novel probe of quark polarization and hadronization mechanism in quark-gluon plasma. Hadronic rescattering may affect the measured spin alignment of vector mesons due to non-uniform rescattering probability in non-central heavy-ion collisions. Using the UrQMD model, we systematically investigated the hadronic rescattering effect on the measurement of $\rho_{ 00}$, the spin alignment parameter, for $K^{ *0}$, $\phi$, and $\rho^{ 0}$ mesons in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{ s_\mathrm{ NN}}$ = 7.7 - 200 GeV. Our results reveal that the measurable $\rho_{ 00} - 1/3$ remains unaffected for $\phi$, while shows significantly negative (positive) deviations for $K^{ *0}$ and $\rho^0$ with respect to the reaction (production) plane. Quantitatively, the maximum deviation reaches $-0.0056$ ($0.0268$) for $K^{ *0}$ and $-0.0122$ ($0.0414$) for $\rho^{ 0}$ with respect to the reaction (production) plane. Notably, the deviations in $\rho_{ 00}$ for both $K^{ *0}$ and $\rho^{ 0}$ increase monotonically with increasing collision energy. These findings underscore the critical necessity of accounting for rescattering effects when interpreting spin alignment measurements of short-lived vector mesons in heavy-ion collisions.
Categories: nucl-ex hep-ex hep-th nucl-th