Measurement of the Inclusive Isolated Prompt Photon Cross Section in ppbar Collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV using the CDF Detector

TL;DR

This paper reports a precise measurement of the inclusive isolated prompt photon production cross section in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV, using the CDF detector, extending previous measurements and comparing with QCD predictions.

Contribution

It provides the largest dataset to date for this measurement, extending the energy range and improving the precision of the cross section measurement.

Findings

Results agree with NLO QCD calculations within uncertainties.

The energy spectrum in data is steeper at lower E_T^gamma.

Extends previous measurements by a factor of seven.

Abstract

A measurement of the cross section for the inclusive production of isolated photons by the CDF experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron collider is presented. The measurement covers the pseudorapidity region |eta^gamma|<1.0 and the transverse energy range E_T^gamma>30 GeV and is based on 2.5/fb of integrated luminosity. The sample is almost a factor of seven larger than those used for recent published results and extends the E_T^gamma coverage by 100 GeV. The result agrees with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations within uncertainties over the range 50<E_Tgamma<400 GeV, though the energy spectrum in the data shows a steeper slope at lower E_T^gamma.