Multiple scattering effects on inclusive particle production in the large-x regime

TL;DR

This paper investigates how multiple scattering effects influence inclusive particle production in high-x proton-nucleus and gamma-nucleus collisions, deriving nuclear size-enhanced power corrections relevant for backward rapidity regions.

Contribution

It introduces a compact formulation of multiple scattering effects in terms of four-parton correlation functions, incorporating both initial and final-state double scattering effects.

Findings

Derived nuclear size-enhanced power corrections for various reactions.

Expressed results in terms of four-parton correlation functions.

Highlight relevance for backward rapidity particle production in p+A and e+A collisions.

Abstract

We study the multiple scattering effects on inclusive particle production in p+A and $\gamma$+A collisions. Specifically, we concentrate on the region where the parton momentum fraction in the nucleus $x\sim {\cal O}(1)$ and incoherent multiple interactions are relevant. By taking into account both initial-state and final-state double scattering, we derive the nuclear size-enhanced power corrections to the differential cross section for single inclusive hadron production in p+A and $\gamma$+A reactions, and for prompt photon production in p+A reactions. We find that the final result can be written in a simple compact form in terms of four-parton correlation functions, in which the second-derivative, first-derivative and non-derivative terms of the correlation distributions share the same hard-scattering functions. We expect our result to be especially relevant for understanding the nuclear modification of particle production in the backward rapidity regions in p+A and e+A collisions.