Study of isolated prompt photon production in p p -Pb collisions for the ALICE kinematics

Prompt photon production is known as a powerful tool for testing perturbative QCD predictions and also the validity of parton densities in the nucleon and nuclei especially of the gluon. In this work, we have performed a detailed study on this subject focusing on the isolated prompt photon production in $p$-Pb collisions at forward rapidity at the LHC. The impact of input nuclear modifications obtained from different global analyses by various groups on several quantities has been investigated to estimate the order of magnitude of the difference between their predictions. We have also studied in detail the theoretical uncertainties in the results due to various sources. We found that there is a remarkable difference between the predictions from the nCTEQ15 and other groups in all ranges of photon transverse momentum $p_\textrm{T}^\gamma$. Their differences become more explicit in the calculation of the nuclear modification ratio and also the yield asymmetry between the forward and backward rapidities rather than single differential cross sections. We emphasize that future measurements with ALICE will be very useful not only for decreasing the uncertainty of the gluon nuclear modification, but also to accurately determine its central values, especially in the shadowing region.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

First global QCD analysis of charged hadron fragmentation functions and their uncertainties at next-to-next-to-leading order

In this paper, we present ${\tt SGK18}$ FFs, a first global QCD analysis of parton-to-{\it unidentified} charged hadrons fragmentation functions (FFs) at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) accuracy in perturbative QCD. This analysis is based on single-inclusive charged hadron production in electron-positron ($e^-e^+$) annihilation. The uncertainties in the extraction of ${\tt SGK18}$ FFs as well as the corresponding observables are estimated using the "Hessian" technique. We study the quality of the {\tt SGK18} FFs determined in this analysis by comparing with the recent results in literature. We also show how {\tt SGK18} FFs results describe the available data for single-inclusive unidentified charged hadron production in $e^-e^+$ annihilation. We demonstrate that the theoretical uncertainties due to the variation of the renormalization and factorization scales improve when NNLO QCD corrections are considered. We find that the resulting {\tt SGK18} FFs are in good agreement with all data analyzed and the inclusion of NNLO corrections tends to improve the data description with somewhat smaller uncertainty.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures and 3 Table

Impact of unidentified light charged hadron data on the determination of pion fragmentation functions

In this paper a new comprehensive analysis of parton-to-pion fragmentation functions (FFs) is performed for the first time by including all experimental data sets on single inclusive pion as well as unidentified light charged hadron production in electron-positron ($e^+e^-$) annihilation. We determine the pion FFs along with their uncertainties using the standard "Hessian" technique at next-to-leading order (NLO) and next-to-next-to leading order (NNLO) in perturabative QCD. It is shown that the determination of pion FFs using simultaneously the data sets from pion and unidentified light charged hadron productions leads to the reduction of all pion FFs uncertainties especially for the case of strange quark and gluon FFs by significant factors. In this study, we have quantified the constraints that these data sets could impose on the extracted pion FFs. Our results also illustrate the significant improvement in the precision of FFs fits achievable by inclusion of higher order corrections. The improvements on both FFs uncertainties as well as fit quality have been clearly discussed.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figures and 3 table

Predictions for the Isolated Prompt Photon Production at the LHC at s

The prompt photon production in hadronic collisions has a long history of providing information on the substructure of hadrons and testing the perturbative techniques of QCD. Some valuable information about the parton densities in the nucleon and nuclei, especially of the gluon, can also be achieved by analysing the measurements of the prompt photon production cross section whether inclusively or in association with heavy quarks or jets. In this work, we present predictions for the inclusive isolated prompt photon production in pp collisions at center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV using various modern PDF sets. The calculations are presented as a function of both photon transverse energy ETγ and pseudorapidity ηγ for the ATLAS kinematic coverage. We also study in detail the theoretical uncertainty in the cross sections due to the variation of the renormalization, factorization, and fragmentation scales. Moreover, we introduce and calculate the ratios of photon momenta for different rapidity regions and study the impact of various input PDFs on such quantity

New insight on the nucleon structure from recent MINERvA measurement of the antineutrino-proton scattering cross-section

We investigate the impact of the new measurement of the antineutrino-proton scattering cross-section from the MINERvA Collaboration on the generalized parton distributions (GPDs), especially of polarized GPDs $\widetilde{H}^q$. To this aim, we perform some QCD analyses of the MINERvA data in addition to all available data of the proton axial form factors (FFs) $F_A$. We show that the MINERvA data are in a good consistency with the other related experimental data which confirms the universality of GPDs in turn. Our results indicate that the MINERvA data can put new constrains on GPDs, especially $\widetilde{H}^q$. The present study can be considered as a guideline for performing a new and comprehensive QCD global analysis of GPDs including the MINERvA measurements like as Phys. Rev. D \textbf{107}, 096005 (2023).Comment: 12 Pages, 6 Figures and 2 Table