Multiple scattering effects on heavy meson production in p+A collisions at backward rapidity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how incoherent multiple scattering influences heavy meson production in p+A collisions at backward rapidity, showing it can explain the observed nuclear enhancement at intermediate transverse momentum.

Contribution

It provides a detailed calculation of double scattering effects including initial and final-state interactions within the high-twist formalism, offering a phenomenological explanation for nuclear enhancement.

Findings

Incoherent multiple scattering contributes positively to heavy meson production.

The model successfully describes nuclear enhancement in intermediate pT in d+Au and p+Pb collisions.

Calculations align with experimental data at RHIC and LHC energies.

Abstract

We study the incoherent multiple scattering effects on heavy meson production in the backward rapidity region of p+A collisions within the generalized high-twist factorization formalism. We calculate explicitly the double scattering contributions to the heavy meson differential cross sections by taking into account both initial-state and final-state interactions, and find that these corrections are positive. We further evaluate the nuclear modification factor for muons that come form the semi-leptonic decays of heavy flavor mesons. Phenomenological applications in d+Au collisions at a center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV at RHIC and in p+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s}=5.02$ TeV at the LHC are presented. We find that incoherent multiple scattering can describe rather well the observed nuclear enhancement in the intermediate $p_T$ region for such reactions.