On the possibility of measuring the gluon distribution in proton with "photon+jet" events at LHC

TL;DR

This paper estimates the potential to measure the gluon distribution in protons at the LHC using photon+jet events, analyzing backgrounds and discrimination techniques with Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed assessment of the feasibility of extracting the gluon distribution function from photon+jet events at the LHC, including background analysis and discrimination methods.

Findings

Estimated event counts for gluon distribution measurement.

Analyzed background contributions and discrimination power.

Used PYTHIA simulations for analysis.

Abstract

The number of events suitable for a determination of the gluon distribution function g(x,Q^2) in a proton at the LHC for various intervals of x and Q^2 are estimated. The contributions of main background sources to ``direct photon+jet'' production processes are studied. The values of discrimination powers between quark and gluon jets as well as between a single photon and the products of pi^0, eta, K^0_s mesons decaying through the neutral channels are applied to estimate the final contributions of various event types to the "photon+jet" production in different intervals of x and Q^2. Monte Carlo events generated by help of the PYTHIA 6.1 generator are used for this analysis.