Direct Photon and Heavy Quark Jet Production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper discusses the production of direct photons with heavy quarks at the LHC, highlighting its potential to probe and constrain gluon and heavy quark nuclear PDFs through experimental measurements.

Contribution

It demonstrates that photon-heavy quark production is highly sensitive to gluon and heavy quark nuclear PDFs, offering a new method to constrain these distributions.

Findings

Over 80% of nPDF dependence at NLO comes from gluon and heavy quark PDFs.

Predictions for the nuclear modification factor at ALICE are provided.

The process can distinguish between different existing nPDF sets.

Abstract

The associated production of direct photons and heavy quarks at the LHC is presented. Predictions for the nuclear modification factor to the cross-section at ALICE are shown. It is demonstrated that this process is a great probe of the gluon and heavy quark nuclear PDFs, as over 80 % of its nPDF dependence at NLO comes from those nPDFs. Therefore measurements of this process will provide an excellent constraint on the gluon nPDF, and will distinguish between different nPDF sets currently out on the market.