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V. J. Kolhinen

Publications and source records attributed to V. J. Kolhinen.

23 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Obtaining the nuclear gluon distribution from heavy quark decays to lepton pairs in p$A$ collisions

We have studied how lepton pairs from decays of heavy-flavoured mesons produced in p$A$ collisions can be used to determine the modifications of the gluon distribution in the nucleus. Since heavy quark production is dominated by the $gg$ channel, the ratio of correlated lepton pair cross sections from $D\bar D$ and $B\bar B$ decays in p$A$ and pp collisions directly reflects the ratio $R_g^A \equiv f_g^A/f_g^p$. We have numerically calculated the lepton pair cross sections from these decays in pp and p$A$ collisions at SPS, RHIC and LHC energies. We find that ratio of the p$A$ to pp cross sections agrees quite well with the input $R_g^A.$ Thus, sufficiently accurate measurements could be used to determine the nuclear modification of the gluon distribution over a greater range of $x$ and $Q^2$ than presently available, putting strong constraints on models.

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Constraints for the nuclear sea quark distributions from the Drell-Yan process at the SPS

Nuclear modifications to the Drell-Yan dilepton production cross sections in p+A and A+A collisions in the leading twist approximation are caused by nuclear effects in the parton distributions of bound nucleons. For non-isoscalar nuclei, isospin corrections must also be considered. We calculate these effects for p+A and Pb+Pb collisions at CERN SPS energies. Our goal is to place constraints on nuclear effects in sea quark distributions in the region x > 0.2. We show that the net nuclear corrections remain small for p+A collisions at E_lab=450 GeV. However, in Pb+Pb collisions at E_lab=158 AGeV, effects of > 20% are predicted at large M. The data collected by the NA50 collaboration could thus be used to constrain the nuclear effects in the sea quark distributions in the region of the EMC effect, x > 0.3.

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Nuclear Parton Distributions - a DGLAP Analysis

Nuclear parton distributions $f_A(x,Q^2)$ are studied within a framework of the DGLAP evolution. Measurements of $F_2^A/F_2^D$ in deep inelastic $lA$ collisions, and Drell--Yan dilepton cross sections measured in $pA$ collisions are used as constraints. Also conservation of momentum and baryon number is required. It is shown that the calculated $Q^2$ evolution of $F_2^{\rm Sn}/F_2^{\rm C}$ agrees very well with the recent NMC data, and that the ratios $R_f^A=f_A/f$ are only moderately sensitive to the choice of a specific modern set of free parton distributions. For general use, we offer a numerical parametrization of $R_f^A(x,Q^2)$ for all parton flavours $f$ in $A>2$, and at $10^{-6}\le x \le 1$ and $2.25 {\rm GeV}^2\le Q^2\le 10^4 {\rm GeV}^2$.

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The scale dependent nuclear effects in parton distributions for practical applications

The scale dependence of the ratios of parton distributions in a proton of a nucleus $A$ and in the free proton, $R_i^A(x,Q^2)=f_{i/A}(x,Q^2)/f_i(x,Q^2)$, is studied within the framework of the lowest order leading-twist DGLAP evolution. By evolving the initial nuclear distributions obtained with the GRV-LO and CTEQ4L sets at a scale $Q_0^2$, we show that the ratios $R_i^A(x,Q^2)$ are only moderately sensitive to the choice of a specific modern set of free parton distributions. We propose that to a good first approximation, this parton distribution set-dependence of the nuclear ratios $R_i^A(x,Q^2)$ can be neglected in practical applications. With this result, we offer a numerical parametrization of $R_i^A(x,Q^2)$ for all parton flavours $i$ in any $A>2$, and at any $10^{-6}\le x \le 1$ and any $Q^2\ge 2.25$ GeV$^2$ for computing cross sections of hard processes in nuclear collisions.

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Scale evolution of nuclear parton distributions

Using the NMC and E665 nuclear structure function ratios $F_2^A/F_2^D$ and $F_2^A/F_2^{C}$ from deep inelastic lepton-nucleus collisions, and the E772 Drell--Yan dilepton cross sections from proton-nucleus collisions, and incorporating baryon number and momentum sum rules, we determine nuclear parton distributions at an initial scale $Q_0^2$. With these distributions, we study QCD scale evolution of nuclear parton densities. The emphasis is on small values of $x$, especially on scale dependence of nuclear shadowing. As the main result, we show that a consistent picture can be obtained within the leading twist DGLAP evolution, and in particular, that the calculated $Q^2$ dependence of $F_2^{Sn}/F_2^{C}$ agrees very well with the recent NMC data.

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