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Probing gluon and heavy-quark nuclear PDFs with γ + Q production in pA collisions

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  • Published: 31 January 2011
  • volume 2011, Article number: 152 (2011)
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Probing gluon and heavy-quark nuclear PDFs with γ + Q production in pA collisions
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  • T. Stavreva1,
  • I. Schienbein1,
  • F. Arleo2,
  • K. Kovařík3,
  • F. Olness4,
  • J. Y. Yu4 &
  • …
  • J. F. Owens5 
  • 532 Accesses

  • 34 Citations

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  • Cite this article

Abstract

We present a detailed phenomenological study of direct photon production in association with a heavy-quark jet in pA collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at next-to-leading order in QCD. The dominant contribution to the cross-section comes from the gluon-heavy-quark (gQ) initiated subprocess, making γ + Q production a process very sensitive to both the gluon and the heavy-quark parton distribution functions (PDFs). Additionally, the RHIC and LHC experiments are probing complementary kinematic regions in the momentum fraction x carried by the target partons. Thus, the nuclear production ratio \( R_{pA}^{\gamma + Q} \) can provide strong constraints, over a broad x-range, on the poorly determined nuclear parton distribution functions which are extremely important for the interpretation of results in heavy-ion collisions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie, UJF, CNRS/IN2P3, INPG, 53 avenue des Martyrs, 38026, Grenoble, France

    T. Stavreva & I. Schienbein

  2. Laboratoire d’Annecy-le-Vieux de Physique Théorique (LAPTH), UMR5108, Université de Savoie, CNRS, BP 110, 74941, Annecy-le-Vieux cedex, France

    F. Arleo

  3. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Fakultät für Physik, Institut für Theoretische Physik (IThP), Postfach 6980, D-76128, Karlsruhe, Germany

    K. Kovařík

  4. Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, 75275, U.S.A.

    F. Olness & J. Y. Yu

  5. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, U.S.A.

    J. F. Owens

Authors
  1. T. Stavreva
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  2. I. Schienbein
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Correspondence to T. Stavreva.

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ArXiv ePrint: 1012.1178

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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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Stavreva, T., Schienbein, I., Arleo, F. et al. Probing gluon and heavy-quark nuclear PDFs with γ + Q production in pA collisions. J. High Energ. Phys. 2011, 152 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01(2011)152

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  • Received: 08 December 2010

  • Accepted: 17 January 2011

  • Published: 31 January 2011

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01(2011)152

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Keywords

  • QCD Phenomenology
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