Centrality and pseudorapidity dependence of the transverse energy density in pPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} =$ 5.02 TeV

TL;DR

This paper measures the distribution of transverse energy over a wide pseudorapidity range in pPb collisions at 5.02 TeV, revealing asymmetries and challenging current event generator models.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurement of $E_T$ distribution over 13.2 units of pseudorapidity in pPb collisions at 5.02 TeV, testing the accuracy of event generators.

Findings

Maximum $dE_T/dta$ is 22 GeV for minimum bias collisions.

$E_T$ per participant nucleon pair is comparable to peripheral PbPb collisions.

Event generators fail to fully reproduce the observed $ta$ and centrality dependence.

Abstract

The almost hermetic coverage of the CMS detector is used to measure the distribution of transverse energy, $E_\mathrm{T}$, over 13.2 units of pseudorapidity, $\eta$, for pPb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} =$ 5.02 TeV. The huge angular acceptance exploits the fact that the CASTOR calorimeter at $-6.6$ $<$ $\eta$ $<$ $-5.2$ is effectively present on both sides of the colliding system because of a switch in the proton-going and lead-going beam directions. This wide acceptance enables the study of correlations between well-separated angular regions and makes the measurement a particularly powerful test of event generators. For minimum bias pPb collisions the maximum value of d$E_\mathrm{T}/$d$\eta$ is 22 GeV, which implies an $E_\mathrm{T}$ per participant nucleon pair comparable to that of peripheral PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} =$ 2.76 TeV. The increase of d$E_\mathrm{T}/$d$\eta$ with centrality is much stronger for the lead-going side than for the proton-going side. The $\eta$ dependence of d$E_\mathrm{T}/$d$\eta$ is sensitive to the $\eta$ range in which the centrality variable is defined. Several modern generators are compared to these results but none is able to capture all aspects of the $\eta$ and centrality dependence of the data and the correlations observed between different $\eta$ regions.