Impact-parameter dependent Color Glass Condensate dipole model and new combined HERA data

TL;DR

This paper introduces an impact-parameter dependent Color Glass Condensate dipole model, compares it with recent high-precision HERA data, and analyzes its predictions for small-x QCD phenomena, highlighting differences with the IP-Sat model at extreme kinematics.

Contribution

The paper develops and tests a b-CGC dipole model incorporating impact-parameter dependence, confronting it with new HERA data and comparing it to the IP-Sat model.

Findings

Both models reproduce key features of DIS and diffractive data.

Differences emerge at very low x and high Q^2, and high t in vector meson production.

Saturation scales are similar within HERA kinematics for both models.

Abstract

The Impact-Parameter dependent Color Glass Condensate (b-CGC) dipole model is based on the Balitsky-Kovchegov non-linear evolution equation and improves the Iancu-Itakura-Munier dipole model by incorporating the impact-parameter dependence of the saturation scale. Here we confront the model to the recently released high precision combined HERA data and obtain its parameters. The b-CGC results are then compared to data at small-x for the structure function, the longitudinal structure function, the charm structure function, exclusive vector meson (J/\psi, \phi, \rho) production and Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS). We also compare our results with the Impact-Parameter dependent Saturation model (IP-Sat). We show that most features of inclusive DIS and exclusive diffractive data, including the Q^2, W, |t| and x dependence are correctly reproduced in both models. Nevertheless, the b-CGC and the IP-Sat models give different predictions beyond the current HERA kinematics, namely for the structure functions at very low x and high virtualities Q^2, and for the exclusive diffractive vector meson and DVCS production at high t. This can be traced back to the different power-law behavior of the saturation scale in x, and to a different impact-parameter b dependence of the saturation scale in these models. Nevertheless, both models give approximately similar saturation scale Q_S<1 GeV for the proton in HERA kinematics, and also both models lead to the same conclusion that the typical impact-parameter probed in the total \gamma^{*}p cross-section is about b\approx 2\div 3 GeV^{-1}. Our results provide a benchmark for further investigation of QCD at small-x in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC and also at future experiments such as an Electron-Ion Collider and the LHeC.