Photons as Probes of Gluon Saturation in Dilute + Dense Collisions

Abstract

We use the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) effective field theory (EFT) to calculate inclusive photon production to leading order q g → q γ , (LO), and next-to leading order g g → q q ¯ γ (NLO) at LHC energies. These processes dominate the photon production at small-x , where x ≲ 0 . 01 in the target and projectile protons. We show that the NLO contribution dominates at values of x typical at the LHC, since its cross-section is sensitive to the gluon distributions in both protons. We perform a comparison of our results to the available inclusive photon data, from ATLAS and CMS at center-of-mass energies of 2 . 76 and 7 TeV . This data lies in the range k ⊥ > 20 GeV . We show that for this range, the k ⊥ -factorized cross-section converges to the full CGC EFT result, and can be used for the comparison. We find that it gives good agreement with experimental results. Our results are to be considered as a first step towards constraining unintegrated gluon distributions, which will be continued for larger systems, where coherent scatterings are enhanced.

Keywords

• prompt
• inclusive
• photon
• saturation
• color glass condensate