Production of pi(0) and eta mesons up to high transverse momentum in pp collisions at 2.76 TeV

Abstract

Correction: DOI:10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-5144-7The invariant differential cross sections for inclusive pi(0) and eta mesons at midrapidity were measured in pp collisions at root s = 2.76 TeV for transverse momenta 0.4 <pT <40 GeV/c and 0.6 <pT <20 GeV/c, respectively, using the ALICE detector. This large range in pT was achieved by combining various analysis techniques and different triggers involving the electromagnetic calorimeter (EMCal). In particular, a newsingle-cluster, shower-shape based method was developed for the identification of high-pT neutral pions, which exploits that the showers originating from their decay photons overlap in the EMCal. Above 4 GeV/c, the measured cross sections are found to exhibit a similar power-law behavior with an exponent of about 6.3. Next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations differ from the measured cross sections by about 30% for the pi(0), and between 30-50% for the. meson, while generator-level simulations with PYTHIA 8.2 describe the data to better than 10-30%, except at pT <1 GeV/c. The new data can therefore be used to further improve the theoretical description of pi(0) and eta meson production.Peer reviewe

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