Nonperturbative Transverse Momentum Effects in Dihadron and Direct Photon-Hadron Angular Correlations

TL;DR

This paper investigates nonperturbative transverse momentum effects in high-energy proton-proton collisions by analyzing dihadron and photon-hadron correlations, revealing insights into initial-state and fragmentation transverse momenta.

Contribution

It provides the first quantitative measurements of nonperturbative transverse momentum effects in $p$+$p$ collisions using the $p_{out}$ observable at RHIC.

Findings

Sensitivity of $p_{out}$ to initial-state $k_T$ and $j_T$ effects.

Evidence of potential factorization breaking in back-to-back particle production.

Quantitative data on transverse momentum correlations at 510 GeV.

Abstract

Two-particle angular correlations have long been used as an observable for measuring the initial-state partonic transverse momentum $k_T$. Sensitivity to this small transverse momentum scale allows nonperturbative transverse momentum dependent effects to be probed in high $p_T$ dihadron and direct photon-hadron correlations. The observable $p_{out}$, the out-of-plane transverse momentum component from a near-side $\pi^0$ or direct photon, is sensitive to initial-state $k_T$ and final-state fragmentation transverse momentum $j_T$ and thus can probe nonperturbative transverse-momentum-dependent effects. In the transverse-momentum-dependent framework, nearly back-to-back particle production in $p$+$p$ collisions with a measured final-state hadron has been predicted to break factorization due to the possibility of gluon exchanges with colored remnants in the initial and final states. For this reason, the interacting partons are predicted to be correlated; however, there is so far no quantitative prediction for the magnitude of such effects. In this talk, recent measurements of dihadron and direct-photon hadron correlations in $p$+$p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$=510 GeV at the PHENIX experiment will be presented.