Single Particle Probes of d+Au Collisions in PHENIX

Abstract

Deuteron-gold collisions provide insights into the nuclear structure function and a valuable baseline for Au+Au collisions. Measurement of the nuclear modification factor, R_{dAu}, in d+Au in the PHENIX central arms for hadrons and photons allows us to disentangle cold nuclear matter effects from the hot medium effects that are important in Au+Au collisions. In addition, the d+Au system can yield important insights into the gluonic structure of the Au nucleus. RHIC experiments have previously measured suppression of forward rapidity particle production relative to p+p scaled by the number of binary N-N collisions, but a definitive explanation of these data is thus far elusive. Correlations between hadrons with a large rapidity gap are a particularly sensitive probe of gluon saturation. We will discuss probing this physics via particle production in events tagged with high momentum particles at different rapidities, along with R_{dAu} in new forward rapidity regions.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures - To appear in the conference proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, Tennessee (final version