Nuclear shadowing and prompt photons in hadronic collisions at ultrarelativistic energies

2008/07/31 by C. Brenner Mariotto, V. P. Gonçalves, V. P. Goncalves
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevc.78.037901

published as Phys.Rev.C78:037901,2008 · 4 pages, 3 figures. Version to be published in PRC

arxiv created 2008/08/26 · openalex publication_date 2008/09/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The production of prompt photons at high energies provides a direct probe of the dynamics of strong interactions. In particular, one expects that it could be used to constrain the behavior of the nuclear gluon distribution in pA and AA collisions. In this brief report, we investigate the influence of nuclear effects in the production of prompt photons and estimate the transverse momentum dependence of the nuclear ratios R_pA=\fracd\ensuremathσ(pA)dy d²p_T/A\fracd\ensuremathσ(pp)dy d²p_T and R_AA=\fracd\ensuremathσ(AA)dy d²p_T/A²\fracd\ensuremathσ(pp)dy d²p_T at at energies currently available at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and CERN Large Hadron Collider. We demonstrate that the study of these observables can be useful in determining the magnitude of the shadowing and antishadowing effects in the nuclear gluon distribution.

Citations

• Asymptotic freedom in parton language
• Nuclear parton distribution functions and their uncertainties
• Nuclear Effects in Prompt Photon Production at the Large Hadron Collider