Constraining Gluon Shadowing Using Photoproduction in Ultraperipheral pA and AA Collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how photoproduction processes in ultraperipheral pA and AA collisions at the LHC can be used to constrain the shadowing effects in nuclear gluon distributions, enhancing our understanding of nuclear parton dynamics.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative analysis of the effectiveness of photoproduction in constraining gluon shadowing at the LHC.

Findings

Photoproduction processes are sensitive to nuclear gluon shadowing.

The study quantifies the extent to which these processes can constrain shadowing effects.

Results support using ultraperipheral collisions to probe nuclear gluon modifications.

Abstract

Photoproduction of heavy quarks and exclusive production of vector mesons in ultraperipheral proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions depend significantly on nuclear gluon distributions. In the present study we investigate quantitatively the extent of the applicability of these processes at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in constraining the shadowing component of nuclear gluon modifications.