Measurement of isolated photon-hadron correlations in $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV pp and p-Pb collisions

TL;DR

This study measures isolated photon-hadron correlations in proton-proton and proton-lead collisions at 5.02 TeV, providing insights into nuclear effects and serving as a baseline for heavy-ion collision analyses.

Contribution

It presents the first measurement of low-momentum photon-hadron correlations in pp and p-Pb collisions at the LHC, comparing data with PYTHIA simulations.

Findings

No significant difference between pp and p-Pb collisions.

PYTHIA 8.2 describes the data within uncertainties.

Provides a baseline for future Pb-Pb studies.

Abstract

This paper presents isolated photon-hadron correlations using pp and p-Pb data collected by the ALICE detector at the LHC. For photons with |$\eta$| < 0.67 and 12 < $p_{\rm{T}}$ < 40 GeV/$c$, the associated yield of charged particles in the range |$\eta$| < 0.80 and 0.5 < $p_{\rm{T}}$ < 10 GeV/$c$ is presented. These momenta are much lower than previous measurements at the LHC. No significant difference between pp and p-Pb is observed, with PYTHIA 8.2 describing both data sets within uncertainties. This measurement constrains nuclear effects on the parton fragmentation in p-Pb collisions, and provides a benchmark for future studies of Pb-Pb collisions.