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Title: Breakdown of QCD factorization at large Feynman x

Journal Article · · Physical Review. C, Nuclear Physics
;  [1];  [2];  [3];  [1]
  1. Departamento de Fisica, Universidad Tecnica Santa Maria, Valparaiso (Chile)
  2. Institute of Experimental Physics SAV, Kosice (Slovakia)
  3. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 (United States)

Recent measurements by the BRAHMS Collaboration of high-p{sub T} hadron production at forward rapidities at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider found the relative production rate (d-Au)/(p-p) to be suppressed rather than enhanced. Examining other known reactions (forward production of light hadrons, the Drell-Yan process, heavy flavor production, etc.), one notes that all of these display a similar property, namely, their cross sections in nuclei are suppressed at large x{sub F}. Since this is the region where x{sub 2} is minimal, it is tempting to interpret this as a manifestation of coherence or of a color glass condensate, whereas it is actually a simple consequence of energy conservation and takes place even at low energies. We demonstrate that in all these reactions there is a common suppression mechanism that can be viewed, alternatively, as a consequence of a reduced survival probability for large rapidity gap processes in nuclei, a Sudakov suppression, an enhanced resolution of higher Fock states by nuclei, or an effective energy loss that rises linearly with energy. Our calculations agree with the data.

OSTI ID:
20699134
Journal Information:
Physical Review. C, Nuclear Physics, Vol. 72, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.72.054606; (c) 2005 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0556-2813
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English