Physics case for quarkonium studies at the Electron Ion Collider
The physics case for quarkonium-production studies accessible at the US Electron Ion Collider is described.
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arXiv subjects
Pieter Taels
Publications and source records attributed to Pieter Taels.
Factorization for $J/\psi$ leptoproduction at small transverse momentum
Nonrelativistic Quantum Chromodynamics (NRQCD) breaks down in the region of low transverse momentum, where the transverse momentum of the produced quarkonium state is sensitive to multiple scattering with the incoming hadron and to soft gluon radiation. In this kinematic regime, the transverse-momentum-dependent (TMD) factorization framework is required, promoting the long-distance matrix elements (LDMEs) of NRQCD to the so-called TMD shape functions (TMDShFs), which encode both the soft gluon radiation and the formation of the heavy-quark bound state. In this work, we apply an effective-field theory approach (combining NRQCD and SCET) to the photon-gluon fusion process in inclusive $J/\psi$ leptoproduction. We derive a factorization theorem for the cross section in terms of TMDShFs, compute these quantities at next-to-leading order, establish their evolution, and study their matching onto the corresponding LDMEs in the high-transverse-momentum region. Our results are particularly relevant to the Electron-Ion Collider, where $J/\psi$ leptoproduction can be used to probe gluon transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution functions (gluon TMDPDFs).
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Forward production of a Drell-Yan pair and a jet at small $x$ at next-to-leading order
We perform the analytical next-to-leading order calculation of the process $p+A\to γ^{*}+\mathrm{jet}+X$, at forward rapidities and low $x$. These kinematics justify a hybrid approach, where a quark from the \textquoteleft projectile' proton scatters off the gluon distribution of the \textquoteleft target', which can be a nucleus or a highly boosted proton. By using the Color Glass Condensate effective theory approach, this gluon distribution is allowed to be so dense that the quark undergoes multiple scattering. Moreover, large high-energy logarithms in the ratio of the hard scale and the center-of-mass energy are resummed by the Balitsky, Kovchegov, Jalilian-Marian, Iancu, McLerran, Weigert, Leonidov, Kovner or BK-JIMWLK evolution equations. We demonstrate that all ultraviolet divergences encountered in the calculation cancel, while the high-energy divergences are absorbed into BK-JIMWLK. The remaining singularities are collinear in nature and can be either absorbed into the Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi evolution of the incoming quark, when they stem from initial-state radiation, or else can be treated by introduction of a jet function in case they are caused by final-state emissions. The resulting cross section is completely finite and expressed in function of only a small set of color operators.
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A spectator-model way to transverse-momentum-dependent gluon distribution functions
We present exploratory analyses of the 3D gluon content of the proton via a study of unpolarized and polarized gluon TMDs at twist-2, calculated in a spectator model for the parent nucleon. Our approach embodies a flexible parametrization for the spectator-mass function, suited to describe both moderate and small-$x$ effects. All these studies can serve as a useful guidance in the investigation of the gluon dynamics inside nucleons and nuclei, which constitutes one of the major goals of new-generation colliding machines, as the EIC, the HL-LHC, NICA, and the FPF.
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Dijet photoproduction at low $x$ at next-to-leading order and its back-to-back limit
We compute the cross section for the inclusive photoproduction of a pair of jets at next-to-leading order accuracy in the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) effective theory. The aim is to study the back-to-back limit, to investigate whether transverse momentum dependent (TMD) factorization can be recovered at this order. In particular, we focus on the large Sudakov double logarithms, which are major ingredients of the TMD evolution. Interestingly, the kinematical improvement of the low-$x$ resummation scheme turns out to be a key ingredient in the analysis.
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Prospects for quarkonium studies at the high-luminosity LHC
Prospects for quarkonium-production studies accessible during the upcoming high-luminosity phases of the CERN Large Hadron Collider operation after 2021 are reviewed. Current experimental and theoretical open issues in the field are assessed together with the potential for future studies in quarkonium-related physics. This will be possible through the exploitation of the huge data samples to be collected in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions, both in the collider and fixed-target modes. Such investigations include, among others, those of: (i) J/psi and Upsilon produced in association with other hard particles; (ii) chi(c,b) and eta(c,b) down to small transverse momenta; (iii) the constraints brought in by quarkonia on gluon PDFs, nuclear PDFs, TMDs, GPDs and GTMDs, as well as on the low-x parton dynamics; (iv) the gluon Sivers effect in polarised-nucleon collisions; (v) the properties of the quark-gluon plasma produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions and of collective partonic effects in general; and (vi) double and triple parton scatterings.
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Extracting color octet NRQCD matrix elements from $J/ψ$ production at the EIC
Recently unpolarized and polarized $J/ψ\,(Υ)$ production at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) has been proposed as a new way to extract two poorly known color-octet NRQCD long-distance matrix elements: $\langle0\vert{\cal O}_{8}^{J/ψ}(^{1}S_{0})\vert0\rangle$ and $\langle0\vert{\cal O}_{8}^{J/ψ}(^{3}P_{0})\vert0\rangle$. The proposed method is based on a comparison to open heavy-quark pair production ideally performed at the same kinematics. In this paper we analyze this proposal in more detail and provide predictions for the EIC based on the available determinations of the color-octet matrix elements. We also propose two additional methods that do not require comparison to open heavy-quark pair production.
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Low-$x$ improved TMD approach to the lepto- and hadroproduction of a heavy-quark pair
We study lepto- and hadroproduction of a heavy-quark pair in the ITMD factorization framework for dilute-dense collisions. Due to the presence of a nonzero quark mass and/or nonzero photon virtuality, new contributions appear compared to the cases of photo- and hadroproduction of dijets, for which the ITMD framework was originally derived. The extra terms are sensitive to gluons that are not fully linearly polarized. At small $x$ those gluons emerge only when saturation effects are taken into account, and in a proper way. As a result, in linear small-$x$ frameworks where gluon are fully linearly polarized, such contributions are absent. We show however that they are not always negligible, even for large gluon transverse momentum, due to the behavior of the off-shell hard factors.
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Transverse-momentum-dependent gluon distribution functions in a spectator model
We present a model calculation of transverse-momentum-dependent distributions (TMDs) of gluons in the nucleon. The model is based on the assumption that a nucleon can emit a gluon, and what remains after the emission is treated as a single spectator particle. This spectator particle is considered to be on-shell, but its mass is allowed to take a continuous range of values, described by a spectral function. The nucleon-gluon-spectator coupling is described by an effective vertex containing two form factors. We fix the model parameters to obtain the best agreement with collinear gluon distributions extracted from global fits. We study the tomography in momentum space of gluons inside nucleons for various combinations of their polarizations. These can be used to make predictions of observables relevant for gluon TMD studies at current and future collider facilities.
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Photoproduction of three jets in the CGC: gluon TMDs and dilute limit
We study the process $γA \to q \bar{q} g+X$ in the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) effective theory. After obtaining the cross section, we consider two kinematic limits which are encompassed in our result. In the so-called correlation limit, the vector sum of the transverse momenta of the three outgoing particles is small with respect to the individual transverse momenta; the cross section then simplifies considerably and can be written in a factorized form, sensitive to both the unpolarized and linearly-polarized Weizsäcker-Williams transverse momentum dependent gluon distribution function (gluon TMD). The second limit of the CGC cross section that we consider is the dilute limit, which we obtain after performing a weak-field expansion; we recover a typical linear-regime expression, involving a single unintegrated gluon distribution function. Using numerical simulations of the small-$x$ QCD evolution of the TMDs, we investigate the rapidity dependence of the cross section in the correlation limit.
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$J/ψ$ meson production in SIDIS: matching high and low transverse momentum
We consider the transverse momentum spectrum and the $\cos 2ϕ$ azimuthal distribution of $J/ψ$ mesons produced in semi-inclusive, deep-inelastic electron-proton scattering, where the electron and the proton are unpolarized. At low transverse momentum, we propose factorized expressions in terms of transverse momentum dependent gluon distributions and shape functions. We show that our formulae, at the order $α_s,$ correctly match with the collinear factorization results at high transverse momentum. The latter are computed at the order $α_s^2$ in the framework of nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD), with the inclusion of the intermediate $^3S_1^{[1]}$ color-singlet Fock state, as well as the subleading color-octet ones that are relatively suppressed by a factor $v^4$ in the NRQCD velocity parameter $v$. We show that the $^1\!S_0^{[8]}$ and $^3\!P_J^{[8]}$ ($J = 0,1,2$) contributions diverge in the small transverse momentum region and allow us to determine the perturbative tails of the shape functions, which carry the same quantum numbers. These turn out to be identical, except for the overall magnitude given by the appropriate NRQCD long distance matrix element.
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Azimuthal asymmetries in semi-inclusive $J/ψ\,+\,\mathrm{jet}$ production at an EIC
We consider transverse momentum dependent gluon distributions inside both unpolarized and transversely polarized protons and show how they can be probed by looking at azimuthal modulations in $e \, p \to e \, J/ψ\, \mathrm{jet} \, X$. We find that the contribution due to quark induced subprocesses is always suppressed in the considered kinematic regions, accessible in principle at a future Electron-Ion Collider. Our model-independent estimates of the maximal values of these asymmetries allowed by positivity bounds suggest the feasibility of their measurement. In addition, by adopting the McLerran-Venugopalan model for the unpolarized and linearly polarized gluon densities, we study the behavior of the $\cos2ϕ$ asymmetries in the small-$x$ limit.
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Gluon TMDs and NRQCD matrix elements in $J/ψ$ production at an EIC
In this paper we analyze azimuthal asymmetries in the processes of unpolarized and polarized $J/ψ\,(Υ)$ production at an Electron-Ion Collider. Apart from giving access to various unknown gluon transverse momentum distributions, we suggest to use them as a new method to extract specific color-octet NRQCD long-distance matrix elements, i.e.\ $\langle0|{\cal O}_{8}^{J/ψ}(^{1}S_{0})|0\rangle$ and $\langle0|{\cal O}_{8}^{J/ψ}(^{3}P_{0})|0\rangle$, whose values are still quite uncertain and for which lattice calculations are unavailable. The new method is based on combining measurements of analogous asymmetries in open heavy-quark pair production which can be performed at the same energy. To enhance the gluon contribution one can consider smaller values of $x$ and, in order to assess the impact of small-$x$ evolution, we perform a numerical study using the MV model as a starting input and evolve it with the JIMWLK equations.
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The gluon Sivers function and its process dependence from RHIC data
We present a phenomenological analysis of available data on single spin asymmetries for pion and $D$ meson production in proton-proton collisions at RHIC within the color gauge invariant generalized parton model (CGI-GPM), which includes initial (ISIs) and final (FSIs) state interactions in a transverse momentum dependent formalism. This study allows us, for the first time, to put preliminary constraints on the two independent gluon Sivers functions entering the model. We also present a comparison with the simpler generalized parton model (without ISIs and FSIs).
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Process dependence of the gluon Sivers function in inclusive $pp$ collisions: theory
Within the color gauge invariant generalized parton model (CGI-GPM), which includes initial and final state interactions in a transverse momentum dependent formalism, we present the complete results, at leading order in perturbative QCD, for transverse single-spin asymmetries in the inclusive hadroproduction of $J/ψ$ and $D$ mesons, pions and direct photons.
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TMD factorization for dijets + photon production from the dilute-dense CGC framework
We calculate the production of a photon and two jets at forward rapidity in proton-nucleus collisions, within the hybrid dilute-dense framework in the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) formalism. After obtaining the cross section for both the quark- and gluon-initiated channels, we consider the correlation limit, in which the vector sum of the transverse momenta of the three outgoing particles is small with respect to the individual transverse momenta. In this limit, the cross section simplifies considerably and can be written in a factorized form, sensitive to various unpolarized and linearly-polarized transverse-momentum-dependent gluon distribution functions (gluon TMDs). Thus, we demonstrate for the first time that the emergence of a TMD factorization formula in the correlation limit, from CGC expressions, holds beyond the previously-considered simpler $2\to2$ processes.
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Jet quenching parameter in an expanding QCD plasma
We present a new definition of the jet quenching parameter $\hat{q}$ in a weakly-coupled quark-gluon plasma undergoing boost-invariant longitudinal expansion. We propose a boost-invariant definition of $\hat{q}$, which is proportional to the broadening of the angular variables $η$ (the pseudo-rapidity) and $ϕ$ (the azimuthal angle). We furthermore consider radiative corrections to $\hat{q}$ and find potentially large corrections enhanced by a double logarithm like the case of a static medium. But unlike for the static medium, these corrections are now local in (proper) time.
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Unraveling the Gluon Sivers Function in Hadronic Collisions at RHIC
We study the transverse single-spin asymmetries for $p^\uparrow p\to π\, X$ and $p^\uparrow p\to γ\, X$ within the so-called color gauge invariant generalized parton model (CGI-GPM) which, in addition to spin and transverse momentum effects, includes initial and final state interactions with the polarized proton remnants. We compute all relevant contributions, focusing in particular on the process dependence of the gluon Sivers function, which, for these processes, can always be expressed as a linear combination of two independent, universal terms. This study extends and completes a previous one, where only quark initiated partonic processes were considered. We then perform a combined phenomenological analysis of RHIC data on transverse single-spin asymmetries in $p^\uparrow p\to π\, X$ and $p^\uparrow p\to D\, X$, putting the first preliminary constraints on these two gluon Sivers functions. We show how their size can be estimated by means of these data, and use our results to provide predictions for the process $p^\uparrow p\to J/ψ\,X$, comparing them with data, and $p^\uparrow p\to γ\, X$, for which experimental information will soon become available. Corresponding estimates within the simpler GPM approach, without initial and final state interactions and with a single universal gluon Sivers function, are also given, showing that a clear discrimination between these two models is, for the moment, not possible.
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