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M. Zhalov

Publications and source records attributed to M. Zhalov.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2011

Proton-Nucleus Collisions at the LHC: Scientific Opportunities and Requirements

Proton-nucleus (p+A) collisions have long been recognized as a crucial component of the physics programme with nuclear beams at high energies, in particular for their reference role to interpret and understand nucleus-nucleus data as well as for their potential to elucidate the partonic structure of matter at low parton fractional momenta (small-x). Here, we summarize the main motivations that make a proton-nucleus run a decisive ingredient for a successful heavy-ion programme at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and we present unique scientific opportunities arising from these collisions. We also review the status of ongoing discussions about operation plans for the p+A mode at the LHC.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Tracking fast small color dipoles through strong gluon fields at the LHC

We argue that the process gamma +A \to J/psi + gap + X at large momentum transfer provides a quick and effective way to test onset of a novel perturbative QCD regime of strong absorption for the interaction of small dipoles at the collider energies. We find that already the first heavy ion run at the LHC will allow to study this reaction with sufficient statistics via ultraperipheral collisions hence probing the interaction of q\bar q dipoles of sizes ~ 0.2 fm with nuclear media down to x ~ 10^{-5}.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2007

The Physics of Ultraperipheral Collisions at the LHC

We discuss the physics of large impact parameter interactions at the LHC: ultraperipheral collisions (UPCs). The dominant processes in UPCs are photon-nucleon (nucleus) interactions. The current LHC detector configurations can explore small $x$ hard phenomena with nuclei and nucleons at photon-nucleon center-of-mass energies above 1 TeV, extending the $x$ range of HERA by a factor of ten. In particular, it will be possible to probe diffractive and inclusive parton densities in nuclei using several processes. The interaction of small dipoles with protons and nuclei can be investigated in elastic and quasi-elastic $J/ψ$ and $Υ$ production as well as in high $t$ $ρ^0$ production accompanied by a rapidity gap. Several of these phenomena provide clean signatures of the onset of the new high gluon density QCD regime. The LHC is in the kinematic range where nonlinear effects are several times larger than at HERA. Two-photon processes in UPCs are also studied. In addition, while UPCs play a role in limiting the maximum beam luminosity, they can also be used a luminosity monitor by measuring mutual electromagnetic dissociation of the beam nuclei. We also review similar studies at HERA and RHIC as well as describe the potential use of the LHC detectors for UPC measurements.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2006

Large t diffractive rho-meson photoproduction with target dissociation in ultraperipheral pA and AA collisions at LHC

We demonstrate that study of large t vector meson photoproduction with rapidity gaps in ultraperipheral proton-ion and ion-ion collisions at LHC would allow to investigate the energy dependence of cross section of elastic scattering of a small dipole off the parton over a wide range of energies $10^3 < s_{dipole - parton} < 10^6 GeV^2$ where this cross section is expected to change by a factor $\ge 20$. The accessible energy range exceeds the one reached at HERA by a factor of 10 both in $γp$ and in $γA$ scattering. In addition, study of A-dependence of this process will allow to determine the t range where interaction of small dipoles gives the dominant contribution and to investigate effects of absorption for the propagation of ultrarelativistic small $q\bar q$ dipoles through the nuclear media and probe in a novel way onset of the black disk regime.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2006

Elastic and large t rapidity gap vector meson production in ultraperipheral proton-ion collisions

We evaluate the cross sections for the production of vector mesons in exclusive ultraperipheral proton-ion collisions at LHC. We find that the rates are high enough to study the energy and momentum transfer dependence of vector mesons - rho,phi, J/psi, Upsilon photoproduction in gamma p scattering in a wide energy range extending the measurements which were performed at HERA, providing new information about interplay of soft and hard physics in diffraction. Also, we calculate the contributions to the vector meson yield due to production of vector mesons off nuclear target by photons emitted by proton. We find, that least in the case of Upsilon production it is feasible to observe simultaneously both these processes. Such measurements would increase the precision with which the A-dependence of exclusive onium production can be determined. This would also enable one to estimate the amount of nuclear gluon shadowing of generalized gluon distributions at much smaller x than that is possible in AA collisions and to measure the cross sections for photoproduction processes in a significantly wider energy range than that achieved in experiments with fixed nuclear targets. We also present the cross section for vector meson production in pA collisions at RHIC. In addition, we consider production of vector mesons off protons with large rapidity gaps and large t. These processes probe small x dynamics of the elastic interaction of small dipoles at high energies and large but finite t, that is in the kinematics where DGLAP evolution is strongly suppressed. We estimate that this process could be studied at LHC up to W ~1 TeV with detectors which will be available at LHC.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2005

Neutron tagging of quasielastic J/psi photoproduction off nucleus in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions at RHIC energies

We compare the coherent and quasielastic J/psi photoproduction in the peripheral heavy ion collisions in kinematics of RHIC. Our improved estimate of the total coherent cross section is a factor of two smaller than the earlier ones. We find that the counting rate of quasielastic J/psi photoproduction tagged by neutrons emitted due to cascading of the recoiled nucleon within the residual nucleus exceeds the rate of the coherent events. We argue that measurements of this process can be used to learn about the dynamics of color dipole-nucleon interactions in nuclei in the wide effective range of energies of gamma A interactions.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2004

Transverse structure of strong interactions at LHC: From diffraction to new particle production

We discuss the global structure of pp events at LHC with hard processes (particle production in two-parton collisions) on the basis of the transverse spatial characteristics of the partonic initial state. Studies of hard exclusive processes in ep scattering have shown that the transverse area occupied by partons with x >= 10^{-2} is much smaller than the size of the nucleon as it appears in generic inelastic pp collisions at high energies ("two-scale picture"). We show that this is consistent with the observation that the elastic pp amplitude at the Tevatron energy is close to the black body limit at small impact parameters. Our picture implies that inclusive heavy particle production (Higgs, SUSY) happens only in central pp collisions. At LHC energies, the final state characteristics of such events are strongly influenced by the approach to the black body limit, and thus may differ substantially from what one expects based on the extrapolation of Tevatron results. Our two-scale picture also allows us to analyze several types of hard diffractive processes observable at LHC: i) Diffractive proton dissociation into three jets, which probes small-size configurations in the proton wave function; ii) exclusive diffractive Higgs production, in which we estimate the rapidity gap survival probability; iii) inclusive diffractive processes.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2004

On the universality of cross sections of hadron-hadron(nuclei) collisions at superhigh energies

We analyze the pattern of the onset of complete absorption (the black limit) in the high energy hadron-hadron collisions. The black limit arises due to the hard and soft interaction dynamics as a function of the impact parameters b. Both hard and soft mechanisms provide universal dependence of the partial amplitude of the high energy elastic hadron- hadron scattering on the impact parameter ${\bf b}$ and result in the radius of interaction proportional to $\ln (s/s_0)$. We find that with increase of the collision energies hard interactions lead to a faster increase of the impact parameter range where the partial wave amplitudes are approaching the unitarity limit. Consequently, we argue that at super high energies whenthe radius of hadronic interactions significantly exceeds static radii of the interacting hadrons(nuclei) the ratio of total cross sections of nucleon-nucleon, meson-nucleon, hadron-nucleus, nucleus-nucleus collisions becomes equal to one. The same universality is also expected for the structure functions of nuclei: $F_{2 A}(x,Q^2)/F_{2 N}(x,Q^2)> \to 1$, at very small $x$, and for the ratio $>σ_{gamma A}/>σ_{>γp}\to 1$ at superhigh energies. We analyze how accounting for the energy dependence of the interaction radii changes the geometry of hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions, the energy dependence of total, absorption and inelastic cross sections, the distribution over the number of wounded nucleons in proton-nucleus collisions and find that these effects are noticeable already for the LHC energies and even more so close to the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2003

The universal psi-prime-prime to psi-prime ratio as unambiguous signature for hard physics in nuclear reactions and in decays of beauty hadrons

We suggest the ratio of the $ψ''(3770)/ψ'(3686)$ production cross sections as an unambiguous probe of the dominance of hard, point-like physics in charmonium production. If hard physics dominates the charmonium production the ratio : ${σ(ψ'')\overσ(ψ')}\approx {Γ(ψ''\to l^+l^-)\over Γ(ψ'\to l^+l^-)} \approx 0.1$ is independent of the process. We argue that since the dominant $D\bar D$ decay mode of the $ψ''$-meson can be detected with a high efficiency at the current facilities the effective counting rate for the $ψ''$ production should be comparable to that of the $ψ'$ and hence it could be observed at the $B$-factories. Even in hadron induced processes the ratio will not be changed significantly by final state interactions due to the similar mass and size of these two charmonium states. A possible exception are the charmonium state interactions with low energy particles -- comovers -- which are especially relevant for the heavy ion collisions.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2003

Coherent Photoproduction from Nuclei

We argue that study of the cross section of coherent photo(electro) production of vector mesons off nuclear targets provides an effective method to probe the leading twist hard QCD regimes of color transparency and perturbative color opacity as well as the onset of black body limit (BBL) in the soft and hard QCD interactions. In the case of intermediate energies we use the Generalized Vector Dominance Model to take into account coherence effects for two distinctive limits - the soft interactions for production of $ρ$ and $ρ'$-mesons and the color transparency regime for production of charmonium states. We demonstrate that GVDM describes very well $ρ$-meson coherent photoproduction at $6 \leq E_γ \leq 10$ GeV and predict an oscillating energy dependence for the coherent charmonium production. In the limit of small $x$ we find that hard QCD leads to onset of the perturbative color opacity even for production of very small onium states, like $Υ$. The advantages of the process of coherent dijet photoproduction and hard diffractive processes in general for probing the onset of BBL and measuring the light-cone wave function of the photon in a hard scattering regime where decomposition over twists becomes inapplicable are explained. We apply this analysis to the study of the photon induced coherent processes in Ultra Peripheral Collisions of ions at LHC and demonstrate that the counting rates will be sufficient to study the physics of color opacity and color transparency at the energies beyond the reach of the electron-nucleon(nucleus) colliders.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2003

Onset of Perturbative Color Opacity at Small x and Upsilon Coherent Photoproduction off heavy nuclei at LHC

We study photon-induced coherent production of Upsilon in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions at LHC and demonstrate that the counting rates will be sufficient to measure nuclear shadowing of generalized gluon distributions. This will establish the transition from the regime of color transparency to the regime of perturbative color opacity in an unambiguous way. We argue that such measurements will provide the possibility to investigate the interaction of ultra-small color dipoles with nuclei in QCD at large energies, which are beyond the reach of the electron-nucleon (nucleus) colliders, and will unambiguously discriminate between the leading twist and higher twist scenarios of gluon nuclear shadowing.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2003

Probing coherent charmonium photoproduction off light nuclei at medium energies

We demonstrate how the elementary amplitudes $γN\to ΨN$, the amplitude of the nondiagonal $J/ψN\Leftrightarrow ψ' N$ transition, and the total $J/ψN$ and $ψ' N$ cross sections can be determined from measurements of the coherent $J/ψ$ and $ψ'$ photoproduction off light nuclei at moderate energies. For this purpose we provide a detailed numerical analysis of the coherent charmonium photoproduction off silicon within the generalized vector dominance model (GVDM) adjusted to account for the physics of charmonium models and color transparency phenomenon.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2003

Cross Section Oscillations in the Coherent Charmonium Photoproduction off Nuclei at Moderate Energies

We calculate the coherent charmonium photoproduction at intermediate energies accounting for the physics of the charmonium bound states and the dependence of the cross section on the region occupied by color using a correspondingly adjusted generalized vector dominance model (GVDM). In the photon energy domain where the coherence lengths are comparable to the average internucleon distances in nuclei and the nuclear radii we found that significant oscillations of the total and forward photoproduction cross sections governed by the longitudinal nuclear form factor are strongly modified by the charmonium rescatterings accounting for the nondiagonal transitions related to the color screening phenomenon. We discuss how these oscillations can influence the determination of the genuine charmonium-nucleon cross sections in the forthcoming SLAC E160 experiment on low energy J/psi and psi' photoproduction off nuclei.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2002

Predictions of the Generalized Glauber Model for the coherent $ρ$-production at RHIC and the STAR data

We calculate the rapidity distribution and the total cross section of coherent and incoherent $ρ$-production in the heavy ion ultraperipheral collisions (UPC) at $\surd s_{NN}=130$ GeV using the generalized vector dominance model(GVDM) and the Gribov- Glauber approach. We find the coherent cross section of $ρ$-production $σ_{coh}=490$ mb compared to the $σ_{coh}=370\pm 170\pm 80$ mb recently reported by the STAR collaboration at RHIC. The predicted cross section inside the acceptance of the experiment, $|y|\le 1$, agrees with the data. It is emphasized that measurements of the rapidity distribution will provide a much more stringent test of the model.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2002

Coherence Effects in Diffractive Electroproduction from Nuclei

We argue that study of the cross section of coherent photo(electro) production of $ρ,ρ^{\prime}, ...$-mesons provides an effective method to probe onset of black body limit(BBL) in the soft and hard QCD interactions. We illustrate the expected features of the onset of BBL using generalized vector dominance model(GVDM). We show that this model describes very well $ρ$-meson coherent photoproduction at $6 \leq E_γ \leq 10$ GeV. The advantages of the process of coherent dijet production and hard diffractive processes in general for probing the onset of BBL and measuring the light-cone wave function of the photon in a hard scattering regime where decomposition over twists becomes inapplicable are explained. We argue also that the regime of color fluctuations manifests itself at intermediate energies in exclusive and semiexclusive photoproduction of vector mesons and that the color transparency(CT) should reveal itself in these processes at $Q^2$ of the order of a few GeV$^2$.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2002

Novel hard semiexclusive processes and color singlet clusters in hadrons

Hard scattering to a three cluster final state is suggested as a method to probe configurations in hadrons containing small size color singlet cluster and a residual quark-gluon system of a finite mass. Examples of such processes include $e + N \to e+ p +M_X (Λ+M_X'), p+p \to p+p+M_X(p+Λ+M_X')$ where $M_X(M_X')$ could be a pion(kaon) or other state of finite mass which does not increase with momentum transfer ($Q^2$). We argue that different models of the nucleon may lead to very different qualitative predictions for the spectrum of states $M_X$. We find that in the pion model of nonperturbative $q \bar q$ sea in a nucleon the cross section of these reactions is comparable to the cross section of the corresponding two-body reaction. Studies of these reactions are feasible using both fixed target detectors (EVA at BNL, HERMES at DESY) and collider detectors with a good acceptance in the forward direction.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2002

Signals for black body limit in coherent ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions

We argue that study of total cross section of photoabsorption and coherent photoproduction of $ρ,ρ^{\prime}$-mesons in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions (UPC) is effective method to probe onset of black body limit(BBL) in the soft and hard QCD interactions. We illustrate the expected features of the onset of BBL using generalized vector dominance model. We show that this model describes very well $ρ$-meson coherent photoproduction at $6 \leq E_γ \leq 10 GeV$. In the case of $ρ$-meson production we find a UPC cross section which is a factor $\sim 1.5 $ larger than the one found by Klein and Nystrand. The advantages of the process of coherent dijet production to probe onset of BBL in hard scattering regime where decomposition over the twists becomes inapplicable are explained and relative importance of the $γ+Pomeron$ and $γ+γ$ mechanisms is estimated.

hep-ph↗