Energy loss effect of incoming gluons from J/ψ production in p-A collisions**Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (11405043, 11575052)

Abstract

The energy loss effect of incoming gluons from J/ψ production in p-A (or d-A) collisions is investigated by means of the E866, RHIC and LHC experimental data. The gluon mean energy loss per unit path length dE/dL = 2.18 ± 0.14 GeV/fm is extracted by fitting the E866 experimental data for J/ψ production cross section ratios RW(Fe)/Be(xF). The obtained result indicates that the incoming gluons lose more energy than the incident quarks. By comparing the theoretical results with E866, RHIC, and LHC experimental data, it is found that the nuclear suppression due to the incident gluon (quark) energy loss reduces (increases) with the increase of the kinematic variable xF (or y). The energy loss effect of incoming gluons plays an important role in the suppression of J/ψ production in a wide energy range from to , and the influence of incident quark energy loss can be ignored for high energies (such as at RHIC and LHC energy).