From unintegrated gluon distributions to particle production in hadronic collisions at high energies

TL;DR

This paper compares various unintegrated gluon distributions in high-energy nucleon-nucleon collisions, highlighting significant differences in particle production predictions and identifying models that best match experimental data.

Contribution

It evaluates multiple UGD models against experimental data, revealing their differences and limitations in describing particle spectra at high energies.

Findings

Karzeev-Levin UGD fits midrapidity charged hadron data well

Significant discrepancies exist among UGD models in rapidity and p_t predictions

Gluonic mechanisms alone do not explain fragmentation region spectra

Abstract

The inclusive distributions of gluons and pions for high-energy NN collisions are calculated. The results for several unintegrated gluon distributions (UGD's) from the literature are compared. We find huge differences in both rapidity and $p_t$ of gluons and $\pi$'s in NN collisions for different models of UGD's. The Karzeev-Levin UGD gives good description of momentum distribution of charged hadrons at midrapidities. We find that the gluonic mechanism discussed does not describe the inclusive spectra of charged particles in the fragmentation region.