Forward particle production in the CGC formalism: average transverse momentum and τ scaling

Abstract

In this work we have used the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) formalism of forward particle production to describe the transverse momentum spectra of charged particles in proton-lead collisions at the LHC. We have also investigated the rapidity dependence of the average transverse momentum, < pT >, and the so called scaling variable, < τ = P2T/Q2s >, where Qs represents the saturation scale of these processes. We have computed the ratios of the first quantity at a given rapidity y to the value at y = 0 (going from y = 0 towards the proton fragmentation region) at the LHC energies. The ratios of the second quantity have been computed to the normalized τ distributions. Our analysis, based on gluon saturation and geometrical scaling, shows that these ratios decrease strongly with y above midrapidities and increase slightly with the energy. We briefly discuss the implications of our results and present predictions for the forthcoming LHC data.