Probing the low-x structure of nuclear matter with diffractive hadron production in pA collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how diffractive hadron production in proton-nucleus collisions can serve as a sensitive probe of low-x QCD dynamics, revealing complex nuclear effects at RHIC and LHC energies.

Contribution

It introduces the diffractive nuclear modification factor and calculates diffractive hadron production cross sections in high-energy pA collisions, highlighting unique nuclear effects.

Findings

Diffractive nuclear modification factor shows non-trivial behavior at RHIC and LHC.

Diffractive processes probe non-linear gluon evolution in nuclei.

The study provides predictions for experimental measurements at RHIC and LHC.

Abstract

We argue that hadron production in coherent diffraction of proton on a heavy nucleus provides a very sensitive probe of the low-x QCD dynamics. This process probes the BFKL dynamics in proton and the non-linear gluon evolution in nucleus. We calculate the diffractive hadron production cross sections in the RHIC and LHC kinematic regions. To study the nuclear effects we introduce the diffractive nuclear modification factor. We show that unlike the nuclear modification factor for inclusive hadron production that has a very interesting dynamics at RHIC but is expected to be almost completely saturated at the LHC, the nuclear modification factor for diffractive production exhibits a non-trivial behavior both at RHIC and LHC.