Gluon saturation and Feynman scaling in leading neutron production

Abstract

In this paper we extend the color dipole formalism for the study of leading neutron production in e+p→e+n+X collisions at high energies and estimate the related observables which were measured at HERA and could be analyzed in future electron–proton (ep) colliders. In particular, we calculate the Feynman xF distribution of leading neutrons, which is expressed in terms of the pion flux and the photon–pion total cross section. In the color dipole formalism, the photon–pion cross section is described in terms of the dipole–pion scattering amplitude, which contains information about the QCD dynamics at high energies and gluon saturation effects. We consider different models for the scattering amplitude, which have been used to describe the inclusive and diffractive ep HERA data. Moreover, the model dependence of our predictions with the description of the pion flux is analyzed in detail. We demonstrate the recently released H1 leading neutron spectra can be described using the color dipole formalism and that these spectra could help us to observe more clearly gluon saturation effects in future ep colliders.