Eta Fragmentation Functions Revisited

TL;DR

This paper refines the extraction of parton-to-eta fragmentation functions at NLO in QCD, incorporating recent collider data to improve precision and consistency across different experiments and energies.

Contribution

It provides a new set of eta fragmentation functions with enhanced accuracy, addressing previous tensions among datasets and utilizing the Monte Carlo replica method for uncertainty estimation.

Findings

Consistent description of all recent collider data.

Improved precision in eta fragmentation functions.

Effective handling of data tensions via scale dependence.

Abstract

We revisit the extraction of parton-to-eta meson fragmentation functions at next-to-leading order accuracy in QCD in the light of the recent hadroproduction measurements in proton-proton collisions obtained by the PHENIX, LHCb, and ALICE collaborations. In addition to an increased precision, the data explore complementary rapidity ranges and center-of-mass system energies. The analysis exploits the theoretical scale dependence to ease tensions among the data sets at different energies that are potentially caused by QCD corrections beyond the next-to-leading order. The resulting set of fragmentation functions yields a consistent description of all available data. Estimates of uncertainties are obtained with the Monte Carlo replica method.