Charged particle multiplicities in pA interactions at the LHC from the Color Glass Condensate

TL;DR

This paper provides quantitative predictions for charged particle multiplicities in proton-nucleus collisions at the LHC, testing gluon saturation models within the Color Glass Condensate framework against existing experimental data.

Contribution

It offers a detailed, saturation-based model prediction for pseudorapidity distributions in pA collisions, validated against RHIC, LHC, and HERA data.

Findings

Model accurately describes existing multiplicity data

Predictions test gluon saturation effects at the LHC

Supports the validity of the Color Glass Condensate approach

Abstract

The forthcoming LHC measurement of hadron multiplicity in proton-nucleus collisions is a crucial test of the k_t factorization and gluon saturation based models. Here, we provide quantitative predictions for the pseudorapidity distribution of charged particles produced in minimum bias proton-nucleus collisions at the LHC based on the idea of gluon saturation in the color-glass condensate framework. Our formulation gives good descriptions of the LHC and RHIC data for the charged-hadron multiplicities in both proton-proton and nucleus-nucleus collisions, and also the deep inelastic scattering at HERA at small Bjorken-x.