Forward J/ψ production in pA collisions : centrality dependence

The nuclear suppression of forward J/ψ production in high energy proton-nucleus collisions can be used as a probe of gluon saturation at small x. In an earlier work we studied this suppression in minimum bias collisions in the Color Glass Condensate formalism, relying on the optical Glauber model to obtain the dipole cross section of the nucleus from the one of the proton fitted to HERA DIS data. Here we study how the impact parameter dependence of this model can be used to compare our results with recent LHC data on the centrality dependence of this suppression. peerReviewed

Next-to-leading order Balitsky-Kovchegov equation beyond large Nc

We calculate finite-Nc corrections to the next-to-leading order (NLO) Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK) equation. We find analytical expressions for the necessary correlators of six Wilson lines in terms of the two-point function using the Gaussian approximation. In a suitable basis, the problem reduces from the diagonalization of a six-by-six matrix to the diagonalization of a three-by-three matrix, which can easily be done analytically. We study numerically the effects of these finite-Nc corrections on the NLO BK equation. In general, we find that the finite-Nc corrections are smaller than the expected 1/Nc2∼10%. The corrections may be large for individual correlators, but have less of an influence…

Forward $J/\psi$ and $D$ meson nuclear suppression at the LHC

Using the color glass condensate formalism, we study the nuclear modification of forward $J/\psi$ and $D$ meson production in high energy proton-nucleus collisions at the LHC. We show that relying on the optical Glauber model to obtain the dipole cross section of the nucleus from the one of the proton fitted to HERA DIS data leads to a smaller nuclear suppression than in the first study of these processes in this formalism and a better agreement with experimental data.

Solving the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation at next to leading order accuracy

We present the first numerical solution to the next to leading order Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK) equation in coordinate space in the large-$N_\mathrm{c}$ limit. In addition to the dipole operator we also solve the evolution of the "conformal dipole" for which the conformal invariance breaking double logarithmic term is absent from the evolution equation. The NLO corrections are shown to slow down the evolution. We show that the solution depends strongly on the details of the initial condition, and that the solution to the equation is not positive definite with all initial conditions relevant for phenomenological applications.

The Large Hadron–Electron Collider at the HL-LHC

The Large Hadron-Electron Collider (LHeC) is designed to move the field of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) to the energy and intensity frontier of particle physics. Exploiting energy-recovery technology, it collides a novel, intense electron beam with a proton or ion beam from the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The accelerator and interaction region are designed for concurrent electron-proton and proton-proton operations. This report represents an update to the LHeC's conceptual design report (CDR), published in 2012. It comprises new results on the parton structure of the proton and heavier nuclei, QCD dynamics, and electroweak and top-quark physics. It is shown how the LH…

Diffractive deep inelastic scattering at NLO in the dipole picture: The qq¯g contribution

Diffractive deep inelastic scattering at NLO in the dipole picture: The qq¯g contribution

We calculate the contribution from the qq¯g state production to the diffractive cross sections in deep inelastic scattering at high energy. The obtained cross section is finite by itself and a part of the full next-to-leading order result for the diffractive structure functions. We perform the calculation in exact kinematics in the eikonal limit, and show that the previously known high-Q2 and large MX2 results for the structure functions can be extracted from our results in the appropriate limits. We furthermore discuss the steps required to obtain the full next-to-leading order results for the structure functions.

Nuclear modification of forward $J/\psi$ production in proton-nucleus collisions at the LHC

We re-evaluate the nuclear suppression of forward $J/\psi$ production at high energy in the Color Glass Condensate framework. We use the collinear approximation for the projectile proton probed at large $x$ and an up to date dipole cross section fitted to HERA data to describe the target in proton-proton collisions. We show that using the Glauber approach to generalize the proton dipole cross section to the case of a nucleus target leads to a nuclear modification factor much closer to LHC data than previous estimates using the same framework.