Forward trijet production in proton-nucleus collisions

TL;DR

This paper calculates the cross-section for forward trijet production in proton-nucleus collisions using light-cone wave functions and hybrid factorization, providing detailed theoretical insights into multi-parton production mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed computation of the three-parton light-cone wave function components and their scattering, advancing the theoretical understanding of trijet production in high-energy collisions.

Findings

Explicit expressions for three-parton wave functions.

Framework for calculating next-to-leading order corrections.

Enhanced understanding of multi-parton scattering processes.

Abstract

Using the formalism of the light-cone wave function in perturbative QCD together with the hybrid factorization, we compute the cross-section for three particle production at forward rapidities in proton-nucleus collisions. In this picture, the three produced partons --- a quark accompanied by a gluon pair, or two quarks plus one antiquark --- are all generated via one or two successive splittings of a quark from the incoming proton, that was originally collinear with the latter. The three partons are put on-shell by their scattering off the nuclear target, described as Lorentz-contracted shockwave. We explicitly compute the three-parton Fock space components of the light-cone wave function of the incoming quark and its outgoing state, which encodes the information both on the evolution in time as well as the scattering process. This outgoing state is also an ingredient for other interesting calculations, like the next-to-leading order correction to the cross-section for the production of a pair of jets.