Probing the Low-x Structure of the Nucleus with the PHENIX Detector

Abstract

One of the fundamental goals of the PHENIX experiment is to understand the structure of cold nuclear matter, since this serves as the initial state for heavy-ion collisions. Knowing the initial state is vital for interpreting measurements from heavy-ion collisions. Moreover, the structure of the cold nucleus by itself is interesting since it is a test-bed for our understanding of QCD. In particular there is the possibility of novel QCD effects such as gluon saturation at low-x in the nucleus. At RHIC we can probe the behavior of gluons at low-x by measuring the pair cross-section of di-hadrons from di-jets in d+Au collisions. Our results show a systematic decrease in the pair cross-section as one goes to smaller impact parameters of the nucleus, and also as one goes to lower Bjorken x. There is a possibility that these interesting effects come from gluon recombination at low x in the Au nucleus.