Relating different approaches to nuclear broadening

Transverse momentum broadening of fast partons propagating through a large nucleus is proportional to the average color field strength in the nucleus. In this work, the corresponding coefficient is determined in three different frameworks, namely in the color dipole approach, in the approach of Baier et al. and in the higher twist factorization formalism. This result enables one to use a parametrization of the dipole cross section to estimate the values of the gluon transport coefficient and of the higher twist matrix element, which is relevant for nuclear broadening. A considerable energy dependence of these quantities is found. In addition, numerical calculations are compared to data for nuclear broadening of Drell-Yan dileptons, J/psi and Upsilon mesons. The scale dependence of the strong coupling constant leads to measurable differences between the higher twist approach and the other two formalisms.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; v2: some changes in presentation, reference added, accepted for publication in PL

Nuclear effects in the Drell-Yan process at very high energies

We study Drell-Yan (DY) dilepton production in proton(deuterium)-nucleus and in nucleus-nucleus collisions within the light-cone color dipole formalism. This approach is especially suitable for predicting nuclear effects in the DY cross section for heavy ion collisions, as it provides the impact parameter dependence of nuclear shadowing and transverse momentum broadening, quantities that are not available from the standard parton model. For p(D)+A collisions we calculate nuclear shadowing and investigate nuclear modification of the DY transverse momentum distribution at RHIC and LHC for kinematics corresponding to coherence length much longer than the nuclear size. Calculations are performed separately for transversely and longitudinally polarized DY photons, and predictions are presented for the dilepton angular distribution. Furthermore, we calculate nuclear broadening of the mean transverse momentum squared of DY dileptons as function of the nuclear mass number and energy. We also predict nuclear effects for the cross section of the DY process in heavy ion collisions. We found a substantial nuclear shadowing for valence quarks, stronger than for the sea.Comment: 46 pages, 18 figures, title changed and some discussion added, accepted for publication in PR