Three jet production and gluon saturation effects in p-p and p-Pb collisions within high-energy factorization

TL;DR

This paper investigates three jet production in high-energy proton-proton and proton-lead collisions at LHC, focusing on gluon saturation effects using high-energy factorization and off-shell gluon evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of three jet production incorporating gluon saturation effects with two independent Monte Carlo implementations.

Findings

Gluon saturation influences azimuthal decorrelations.

Unbalanced jet transverse momenta are affected by small x evolution.

Differences in unintegrated gluon densities impact cross section predictions.

Abstract

We analyze three jet production in the central-forward and forward rapidity regions in proton-proton and proton-lead collisions at LHC energies. Our calculation relies on high-energy factorization with a single off-shell gluon obeying small x evolution equation which includes saturation. The calculations are made using two independent Monte Carlo codes implementing tree-level gauge invariant off-shell matrix elements. We calculate differential cross sections for azimuthal decorrelations and unbalanced jet transverse momenta and discuss them in the context of differences in the evolution of the unintegrated gluon densities.