Hadron production in pA collisions at the LHC from the Color Glass Condensate

TL;DR

This paper models hadron production in pA collisions at the LHC using the Color Glass Condensate framework, incorporating elastic and inelastic processes, and provides predictions for nuclear modification factors at various energies and rapidities.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid approach including both elastic and inelastic contributions with the running-coupling BK equation, improving the description of hadron production data.

Findings

Good agreement with RHIC data

Inelastic terms steepen p_T dependence at mid-rapidity

Predictions for LHC pA collisions at different energies and rapidities

Abstract

We investigate the contribution of inelastic and elastic processes to single inclusive hadron production in proton-proton and proton (deuteron)-nucleus collisions at RHIC and the LHC. Using the hybrid formulation which includes both elastic and inelastic contributions, supplemented with the running-coupling Balitsky-Kovchegov equation, we get a good description of RHIC data. It is shown that inclusion of the inelastic terms makes the transverse momentum dependence of the production cross section steeper in the mid-rapidity region but does not affect the cross section in the very forward region. The inelastic processes also lead to a sharper increase of the nuclear modification factor R_{pA} with increasing p_T. We also make predictions for the nuclear modification factor in proton-nucleus collisions at the LHC (\sqrt{s}=4.4 and 8.8 TeV) at various rapidities using the Color Glass Condensate framework.