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arXiv · 1012.1178

Probing gluon and heavy-quark nuclear PDFs with photon + heavy quark production in pA collisions

T. Stavreva·I. Schienbein·F. Arleo·K. Kovarik·F. Olness·J. Y. Yu·J. F. Owens
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Abstract

We present a detailed phenomenological study of direct photon production in association with a heavy-quark jet in pA collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at next-to-leading order in QCD. The dominant contribution to the cross-section comes from the gluon--heavy-quark (gQ) initiated subprocess, making \gamma + Q production a process very sensitive to both the gluon and the heavy-quark parton distribution functions (PDFs). Additionally, the RHIC and LHC experiments are probing complementary kinematic regions in the momentum fraction x_2 carried by the target partons. Thus, the nuclear production ratio R^{\gamma+Q}_{pA} can provide strong constraints, over a broad x-range, on the poorly determined nuclear parton distribution functions which are extremely important for the interpretation of results in heavy-ion collisions.

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T. Stavreva, I. Schienbein, F. Arleo, K. Kovarik, F. Olness, J. Y. Yu, J. F. Owens. 2010-12-06. Probing gluon and heavy-quark nuclear PDFs with photon + heavy quark production in pA collisions. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep01(2011)152

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