The Effect of Shadowing on Initial Conditions, Transverse Energy and Hard Probes in Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nuclear shadowing influences initial conditions, transverse energy, and hard probe production in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, using various parton distributions and shadowing models.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of shadowing effects on key observables in heavy ion collisions at different energies and collision systems.

Findings

Shadowing significantly affects initial state conditions.

Results vary with different shadowing parameterizations.

Impacts on hard probe yields are quantified.

Abstract

The effect of shadowing on the early state of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is investigated along with transverse energy and hard process production, specifically Drell-Yan, $J/\psi$, and $\Upsilon$ production. We choose several parton distributions and parameterizations of nuclear shadowing, as well as the spatial dependence of shadowing, to study the influence of shadowing on relevant observables. Results are presented for Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV and Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.5$ TeV.