On theoretical uncertainty of color dipole phenomenology in the J/Psi and Upsilon photoproduction in pA and AA collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the theoretical uncertainties in predicting J/psi and Upsilon photoproduction in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC using the color dipole model, comparing predictions with recent ALICE data.

Contribution

It systematically examines the dependence of predictions on meson wavefunctions, quark masses, and dipole models, providing a comprehensive uncertainty analysis and new predictions for various collision systems.

Findings

Good agreement with ALICE J/psi data in pPb and PbPb collisions.

Quantified the impact of wavefunction and model choices on predictions.

Provided new predictions for Upsilon production in different collision systems.

Abstract

We investigate the theoretical uncertainty on the predictions for the photoproduction of J/psi and Upsilon states in the proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC within the color dipole formalism. Predictions for the rapidity distributions are presented and the dependence on the meson wavefunction, heavy quark mass as well as the models for the dipole cross section are analyzed. We compare directly the theoretical results to the recent data from ALICE collaboration on J/psi production in pPb collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV and in PbPb collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 2.76 TeV. Predictions are also performed for $\Upsilon$ state in PbPb and pPb and pp collisions at the LHC energies, including the coherent and incoherent contributions.