Production of three isolated photons in the high-energy factorization approach

TL;DR

This paper investigates three-photon production at the LHC using the high-energy factorization approach, achieving predictions that align well with existing data and extending to higher energies where it forecasts increased cross sections.

Contribution

It introduces a LO parton Reggeization approach merged with NLO corrections for three-photon production, providing a novel high-energy QCD prediction method.

Findings

Good agreement with LHC data at 8 TeV

Predicted larger cross sections at 13 and 27 TeV energies

Up to 20% increase in cross sections at higher energies

Abstract

We study large-$p_T$ three-photon production at the LHC at the center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV. We use the LO approximation of the parton Reggeization approach consistently merged with the real NLO corrections. For numerical calculations use the parton-level generator KaTie and modified KMR-type unintegrated parton distribution functions. We find good agreement between our predictions and data with the same accuracy as in the NNLO calculations based on the collinear parton model of QCD. At higher energies ($\sqrt{s}=13$ and 27 TeV) parton Reggeization approach predicts larger cross sections, up to $\sim 10$ \% and $\sim 20$ \%, respectively.