Double Parton Scatterings in High-Energy Proton-Nucleus Collisions and Partonic Correlations

TL;DR

This paper investigates double parton scatterings in high-energy proton-nucleus collisions, focusing on $WJJ$ production to understand multi-parton correlations and the impact of interference effects, revealing a potential increase in DPS event fraction.

Contribution

It introduces a method to study DPS in $p$-$A$ collisions using $WJJ$ production, highlighting the absence of interference terms and estimating a significant increase in DPS events compared to $p$-$p$ collisions.

Findings

DPS event fraction in $p$-$Pb$ may be 3-4 times higher than in $p$-$p$.

Interference terms complicate $p$-$A$$ collision$ analysis but can be bypassed with specific channels.

Increased DPS fraction indicates stronger multi-parton correlations.

Abstract

The joint study of Double Parton Scatterings, in high energy proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions, can provide a lot of information on multi-parton correlations. The multi-parton structure is in fact probed in a different way by DPS, in $p$-$p$ and in $p$-$A$ collisions. In $p$-$A$ collisions the interpretation of the experimental results may be however complicated by the presence of interference terms, which are missing in $p$-$p$. A suitable reaction channel, where interference terms are absent, is $WJJ$ production. By studying $WJJ$ production in $p$-$Pb$ collisions, we estimate that the fraction of events due to DPS may be larger by a factor 3 or 4, as compared to $p$-$p$, while the amount of the increased fraction can give a direct indication on the importance of different correlation terms.