Two-particle azimuthal harmonics in pA collisions

Abstract

We compute two-particle production in pA collisions and extract azimuthal harmonics, using the dilute-dense formalism in the Color Glass Condensate framework. The multiple scatterings of the partons inside the projectile proton on the dense gluons inside the target nucleus are expressed in terms of Wilson lines. They generate interesting correlations, which can be partly responsible for the signals of collectivity measured at RHIC and at the LHC. Most notably, while gluon Wilson loops yield vanishing odd harmonics, quark Wilson loops can generate sizable odd harmonics for two particle correlations. By taking both quark and gluon channels into account, we find that the overall second and third harmonics lie rather close to the recent PHENIX data at RHIC.