Next-to-leading order forward hadron production in the small-$x$ regime: rapidity factorization
Abstract
Single inclusive hadron production at forward rapidity in high energy p+A collisions is an important probe of the high gluon density regime of QCD and the associated small- formalism. We revisit an earlier one-loop calculation to illustrate the significance of the "rapidity factorization" approach in this regime. Such factorization separates the very small- unintegrated gluon density evolution and leads to a new correction term to the physical cross section at one-loop level. Importantly, this rapidity factorization formalism remedies the previous unphysical negative next-to-leading order contribution to the cross section. It is much more stable with respect to "rapidity" variation when compared to the leading-order calculation and provides improved agreement between theory and experiment in the forward rapidity region.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1403.5221,
title = {Next-to-leading order forward hadron production in the small-$x$ regime: rapidity factorization},
author = {Zhong-Bo Kang and Ivan Vitev and Hongxi Xing},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.5221},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures