Pion Nuclear Fragmentation Functions Revisited

TL;DR

This paper reevaluates nuclear parton-to-pion fragmentation functions at NLO accuracy, comparing theoretical models with precise experimental data from CERN-LHC and JLab to improve understanding of hadroproduction in nuclear environments.

Contribution

It provides a revised analysis of nuclear fragmentation functions at NLO, assessing their compatibility with recent high-precision experimental data.

Findings

Nuclear fragmentation functions are consistent with LHC and JLab data within uncertainties.

Revised functions improve the description of pion production in nuclear collisions.

The study highlights the importance of NLO corrections in nuclear fragmentation analyses.

Abstract

We revisit the notion of nuclear parton-to-pion fragmentation functions at next-to-leading order accuracy as an effective description of hadroproduction in nuclear environments such as in semi-inclusive lepton-nucleus deep-inelastic scattering and in single inclusive proton-nucleus collisions. We assess their viability in the face of very precise data collected for the latter at the CERN-LHC over the past decade as well as recent measurements of the former carried out by the CLAS experiment at JLab.