Thermal radiation and inclusive production in the running coupling $k_T$ -- factorization approach

TL;DR

This paper investigates thermal radiation in high-energy collisions using a two-component model with the Color Glass Condensate formalism, showing the thermal term's necessity and its energy dependence aligned with the saturation scale.

Contribution

It introduces a combined model incorporating thermal radiation and Color Glass Condensate formalism to better describe high-energy collision data.

Findings

Thermal term is essential for matching experimental data.

Thermal temperature correlates with the saturation scale.

Thermal temperature increases in pPb collisions as predicted.

Abstract

The characteristics of the thermal radiation are investigated using a two - component model, with the hard component being described by the Color Glass Condensate formalism. The inclusive transverse momentum spectra of charged hadrons produced in proton - proton and proton - nucleus collisions at LHC energies and large - $p_T$ are estimated using the running coupling $k_T$ - factorization formula and the solution of the Balitsky - Kovchegov equation. Our results indicate that the thermal term is necessary to describe the experimental data and that the effective thermal temperature has an energy dependence similar to the saturation scale. We demonstrate that the enhancement of the thermal temperature in $pPb$ collisions is consistent with that predicted by the saturation scale.