Constraints on nuclear parton distributions from dijet photoproduction at the LHC

Abstract

Abstract Using QCD calculations of the cross section of inclusive dijet photoproduction in Pb–Pb ultraperipheral collisions in the LHC kinematics as pseudo-data, we study the effect of including these data using the Bayesian reweighting technique on nCTEQ15, nCTEQ15np, and EPPS16 nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs). We find that, depending on the assumed error of the pseudo-data, it leads to a significant reduction of the nPDF uncertainties at small values of the momentum fraction $$x_A$$ xA . Taking the error to be 5%, the uncertainty of nCTEQ15 and nCTEQ15np nPDFs reduces approximately by a factor of two at $$x_A=10^{-3}$$ xA=10-3 . At the same time, the reweighting effect on EPPS16 nPDFs is much smaller due to the higher value of the tolerance and a more flexible parametrization form.