Investigating the high energy QCD approaches for prompt photon production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper compares different high-energy QCD theoretical approaches to predict prompt photon production at the LHC, focusing on the impact of parton saturation effects at forward rapidities.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of NLO pQCD and color dipole formalism predictions, emphasizing the role of saturation models at high energies.

Findings

Saturation effects become significant at forward rapidities.

Color dipole formalism offers alternative predictions to NLO pQCD.

Parton saturation models influence the transverse momentum distributions.

Abstract

We investigate the rapidity and transverse momentum distributions of the prompt photon production at the CERN LHC energies considering the current perturbative QCD approaches for this scattering process. Namely, we compare the predictions from the usual NLO pQCD calculations to the the color dipole formalism, using distinct dipole cross sections. Special attention is paid to parton saturation models at high energies, which are expected to be important at the forward rapidities in pp collisions at the LHC.