Leading neutron production at the EIC and LHeC: estimating the impact of the absorptive corrections

TL;DR

This paper investigates leading neutron production at high-energy ep collisions using the color dipole formalism, emphasizing the importance of absorptive effects and their impact on spectra relevant to future collider experiments.

Contribution

It updates the treatment of absorptive effects in leading neutron production and estimates their impact on spectra at the EIC and LHeC, highlighting the significance of these effects.

Findings

Absorptive effects do not violate Feynman scaling associated with saturation.

Leading neutron spectra are strongly suppressed at small photon virtualities.

Absorptive effects are crucial for accurate extraction of the $\

Abstract

Leading neutron (LN) production in $ep$ collisions at high energies is investigated using the color dipole formalism and taking into account saturation effects. We update the treatment of absorptive effects and estimate the impact of these effects on LN spectra in the kinematical range that will be probed by the Electron Ion Collider (EIC) and by the Large Hadron electron Collider (LHeC). We demonstrate that Feynman scaling, associated to saturation, is not violated by the inclusion of absorptive effects. Moreover, our results indicate that the LN spectrum is strongly suppressed at small photon virtualities. These results suggest that absorptive effects cannot be disregarded in future measurements of the $\gamma \pi$ cross section to be extracted from data on leading neutron production.