Collisions of protons with light nuclei shed new light on nucleon structure

TL;DR

This paper explores how proton collisions with light nuclei like deuterium, tritium, and helium-3 can reveal detailed information about the multi-parton structure inside protons, advancing understanding of nucleon composition.

Contribution

It introduces a method to disentangle double and triple correlation effects in multi-parton interactions using collisions with different light nuclei.

Findings

Disentangled effects of double and triple correlations in multi-parton interactions.

Provided insights into the spatial distribution of partons within protons.

Suggested new experimental approaches for studying nucleon structure.

Abstract

The high rates of multi-parton interactions at the LHC can provide a unique opportunity to study the multi-parton structure of the hadron. To this purpose high energy collisions of protons with nuclei are particularly suitable. The rates of multi-parton interactions depend in fact both on the partonic multiplicities and on the distributions of partons in transverse space, which produce different effects on the cross section in pA collisions, as a function of the atomic mass number A. Differently with respect to the case of multi-parton interactions in pp collisions, the possibility of changing the atomic mass number provides thus an additional handle to distinguish the diverse contributions. Some relevant features of double parton interactions in pD collisions have been discussed in a previous paper. In the present paper we show how the effects of double and triple correlation terms of the multi-parton structure can be disentangled, by comparing the rates of multiple parton interactions in collisions of protons with D, Tritium and 3He.