Scattering off the Color Glass Condensate

TL;DR

This thesis applies the Color Glass Condensate framework to high-energy scattering processes, demonstrating its effectiveness in describing experimental data and improving theoretical models for particle production and correlations.

Contribution

It advances the CGC framework by fitting initial conditions to DIS data, incorporating higher order corrections, and extending calculations to include nuclear geometry, correlations, and vector meson production.

Findings

Leading order CGC describes DIS and collision data well.

Proper nuclear geometry modeling aligns predictions with experimental nuclear suppression.

Enhanced correlation calculations match RHIC measurements.

Abstract

In this thesis the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) framework, which describes quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at high energy, is applied to various scattering processes. Higher order corrections to the CGC evolution equations, known as the BK and JIMWLK equations, are also considered. It is shown that the leading order CGC calculations describe the experimental data from electron-proton deep inelastic scattering (DIS), proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions. The initial condition for the BK evolution equation is obtained by performing a fit to deep inelastic scattering data. The fit result is used as an input to calculations of single particle spectra and nuclear suppression in proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions, which are shown to be in agreement with RHIC and LHC measurements. In particular, the importance of a proper description of the nuclear geometry consistently with the DIS data fits is emphasized, as it results in a nuclear suppression factor $R_{pA}$ which is consistent with the available experimental data. In addition to single particle production, the correlations between two hadrons at forward rapidity are computed. The RHIC measurements are shown to be naturally explainable in the CGC framework, and the previous CGC calculations are improved by including the so called inelastic and double parton scattering contributions. This improvement is shown to be required in order to get results compatible with the experimentally measured correlations. Exclusive vector meson production, which can be a powerful tool to study the gluonic structure of nuclei at small Bjorken-$x$, is also considered. The cross sections are calculated within the CGC framework in the context of a future electron-ion collider. In particular, the cross section for incoherent diffractive vector meson production is derived and a centrality estimator for this process is proposed.