English

Next-to-leading order forward hadron production in the small-$x$ regime: rapidity factorization

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2014-08-13 v1 High Energy Physics - Experiment Nuclear Experiment Nuclear Theory

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-xx 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-xx 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