They mention that they measure "cache coherence protocol" throughput. So yes, this happens when two or more cores need to work on the same memory and they need to synchronize/update what is in their L1 and L2 (and probably L3 as well?) caches.
If core2 now accesses that cache line again, it would not find it in its L1, or L2, and at L3 there is the cacheline directory routing the request to core1.