Heavy flavor production in nuclear collisions

Abstract

Heavy flavor production off nuclei is studied in the small x F region of the produced heavy system. Corrections to the usually employed perturbative QCD factorization formula are considered in the framework of the Glauber-Gribov model. Transition from low to high energies is taken into account by using finite energy cutting rules. The low energy limit of the obtained results coincides with the probabilistic formula usually employed for quarkonium absorption. At finite energies both rescattering of the heavy flavor and corrections to nucleon parton densities inside nuclei appear, the latter also affecting lepton pair production. It turns out that at asymptotic energies both open heavy flavor and quarkonium are equally absorbed. The numerical differences between the results obtained with the probabilistic formula and the exact one are 20 % up to LHC energies, and ~ 1 ??? 2 % at SPS energies.