Single Inclusive Hadron Production Research Articles

SIDIS at small x at next-to-leading order: Gluon contribution

We calculate the contribution of gluons to single inclusive hadron production at next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) at small x using the color glass condensate formalism. It is shown that the only divergence present is the standard collinear divergence, which is absorbed into scale evolution of quark-hadron fragmentation function. Our calculations are performed at finite Nc and we provide general finite Nc expressions for the structure of Wilson lines appearing in inclusive dihadron and single hadron production cross sections. We also comment on how one can obtain rapidity distribution of hadron multiplicities from our results. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Single inclusive hadron production at the LHC with an improved impact parameter dependent saturation model* *Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12165004, 11765005, 11947119); the Guizhou Provincial Science and Technology Projects (ZK[2023]027, [2019]5103); the Education Department of Guizhou Province, China (KY[2021]131); the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFE0104700, CCNU18ZDPY04)

To obtain a reasonable description of the hadron production at the LHC energies, the impact parameter dependent saturation model is modified by inclusion of an anomalous dimension γ, which controls the slope of the scattering amplitude in the transition from the dilute region to the saturation region. We calculate the transverse momentum distribution and nuclear modification factor of the and charged hadrons with the improved model, and the results are consistent with measurements performed at the LHC. Moreover, we use the original impact parameter dependent model to study the aforementioned measurements performed at the LHC by adjusting its parameters. We find that the improved model is more consistent with the experimental data than the original one, as the anomalous dimension plays a significant role in the suppression of the evolution of the scattering amplitude.

Single inclusive hadron production in DIS at small x: next to leading order corrections

We calculate the one-loop corrections to single inclusive hadron production in Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) at small x in the forward rapidity region using the Color Glass Condensate formalism. We show that the divergent parts of the next to leading order (NLO) corrections either cancel among each other or lead to x (rapidity) evolution of the leading order (LO) dipole cross section according to the JIMWLK evolution equation and DGLAP evolution of the parton-hadron fragmentation function. The remaining finite parts constitute the NLO (αs) corrections to the LO single inclusive hadron production cross section in DIS at small x.

Transverse Λ polarization in e+e− processes within a TMD factorization approach and the polarizing fragmentation function

We perform a re-analysis of Belle data for the transverse Λ and overline{Lambda} polarization in e+e− annihilation processes within a transverse momentum dependent (TMD) factorization approach. We consider two data sets, one referring to the associated production of Λ’s with a light unpolarized hadron in an almost back-to-back configuration, and one for the inclusive Λ production, with the reconstruction of the thrust axis. We adopt the Collins-Soper-Sterman framework and employ the recent formulation on the factorization of single-inclusive hadron production. This extends a previous phenomenological study carried out in a more simplified TMD approach, leading to a new extraction of the polarizing fragmentation function (FF). While confirming several features of the previous analysis, here we include the proper QCD scale dependence of this TMD FF and carefully exploit the role of its nonperturbative component. The compatibility, within a unique TMD factorization scheme, of double and single-inclusive hadron production is discussed in detail. Moreover, we consider another data set for inclusive Λ production, at much larger energies, from the OPAL Collaboration, in order to test the consistency of the entire approach. Finally, we elaborate on some fundamental issues like the role of SU(2) isospin symmetry and the heavy quark contributions.

Impact of inclusive hadron production data on nuclear gluon PDFs

A precise knowledge of nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) is---among other things---important for the unambiguous interpretation of hard process data taken in $pA$ and $AA$ collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the LHC. The available fixed target data for deep inelastic scattering (DIS) and Drell-Yan (DY) lepton pair production mainly constrain the light quark distributions. It is hence crucial to include more and more collider data in global analyses of nPDFs in order to better pin down the different parton flavors, in particular the gluon distribution at small $x$. To help constrain the nuclear gluon PDF, we extend the nCTEQ15 analysis by including single inclusive hadron (SIH) production data from RHIC (PHENIX and STAR) and LHC (ALICE). In addition to the DIS, DY, and SIH datasets, we will also include LHC $W/Z$ production data. As the SIH calculation is dependent on hadronic fragmentation functions (FFs), we use a variety of FFs available in the literature to properly estimate this source of uncertainty. We study the impact of these data on the PDFs and compare with both the nCTEQ15 and nCTEQ15WZ sets. The calculations are performed using a new implementation of the nCTEQ code (ncteq++) including a modified version of incnlo, which allows faster calculations using precomputed grids. The extension of the nCTEQ15 analysis to include the SIH data represents an important step toward the next generation of PDFs.

Simultaneous extraction of fragmentation functions of light charged hadrons with mass corrections

Achieving the highest possible precision for theoretical predictions at the present and future high-energy lepton and hadron colliders requires a precise determination of fragmentation functions (FFs) of light and heavy charged hadrons from a global QCD analysis with great accuracy. We describe a simultaneous determination of unpolarized FFs of charged pions, charged kaons and protons/antiprotons from single-inclusive hadron production in electron-positron annihilation (SIA) data at next-to-leading order and next-to-next-to-leading order accuracy in perturbative QCD. A new set of FFs, called SGKS20, is presented. We include data for identified light charged hadrons (${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$, ${K}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ and $p/\overline{p}$) as well as for unidentified light charged hadrons, ${h}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ and show that these data have a significant impact on both size and uncertainties of the fragmentation functions. We examine the inclusion of higher-order perturbative QCD corrections and finite-mass effects. We compare the new SGKS20 FFs with other recent FFs available in the literature and find in general reasonable agreement, but also important differences for some parton species. We show that theoretical predictions obtained from our new FFs are in very good agreement with the analyzed SIA data, especially at small values of $z$. The SGKS20 FF sets presented in this work are available via the LHAPDF interface.

Transverse momentum dependent of charged pion, kaon, and proton/antiproton fragmentation functions from e+e− annihilation process

The main aim of this paper is a new determination of transverse momentum dependence of unpolarized fragmentation function (TMD FFs) in single inclusive hadron production in electron-positron annihilation (SIA) process. Motivated by the need for a reliable and consistent determination of TMD FFs, we use the most recent TMD production cross sections of charged pions ($\pi^\pm$), kaons ($K^\pm$) and protons/antiprotons ($p/\bar{p}$) measured in inclusive $e^+e^-$ collisions by Belle Collaboration. These datasets are the first transverse momentum dependence of identified light charged hadron measurements SIA process. In this analysis, referred to as {\tt SK19 TMD FFs}, the common Gaussian distribution is used for the $P_{hT}$ dependent of the cross section. The uncertainties in the extraction of {\tt SK19 TMD FFs} are estimated using the standard "Hessian" technique. We study the quality of the TMD FFs determined in this analysis by comparing with the available recent Belle cross sections measurement. For all hadron species, we found a very good agreement between this particular set of experimental data and the corresponding theory calculations over a relatively wide range of transverse momentum $P_{hT}$. As a result of this study, suggestions are identified for possible future research considering the theory improvements and other available experimental observables.

Deep inelastic scattering in the dipole picture at next-to-leading order

We study quantitatively the importance of the recently derived NLO corrections to the DIS structure functions at small x in the dipole formalism. We show that these corrections can be significant and depend on the factorization scheme used to resum large logarithms of energy into renormalization group evolution with the BK equation. This feature is similar to what has recently been observed for single inclusive forward hadron production. Using a factorization scheme consistent with the one recently proposed for the single inclusive cross section, we show that it is possible to obtain meaningful results for the DIS cross sections.

Forward hadron production in pA collisions beyond leading order

In this talk, we report our recent progress on pinning down the cause of negativity in the NLO single inclusive hadron production in pA collisions at forward rapidity.

A determination of the fragmentation functions of pions, kaons, and protons with faithful uncertainties

We present NNFF1.0, a new determination of the fragmentation functions (FFs) of charged pions, charged kaons, and protons/antiprotons from an analysis of single-inclusive hadron production data in electron–positron annihilation. This determination, performed at leading, next-to-leading, and next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD, is based on the NNPDF methodology, a fitting framework designed to provide a statistically sound representation of FF uncertainties and to minimise any procedural bias. We discuss novel aspects of the methodology used in this analysis, namely an optimised parametrisation of FFs and a more efficient chi ^2 minimisation strategy, and validate the FF fitting procedure by means of closure tests. We then present the NNFF1.0 sets, and discuss their fit quality, their perturbative convergence, and their stability upon variations of the kinematic cuts and the fitted dataset. We find that the systematic inclusion of higher-order QCD corrections significantly improves the description of the data, especially in the small-z region. We compare the NNFF1.0 sets to other recent sets of FFs, finding in general a reasonable agreement, but also important differences. Together with existing sets of unpolarised and polarised parton distribution functions (PDFs), FFs and PDFs are now available from a common fitting framework for the first time.

Transverse parton momenta in single inclusive hadron production in e+e− annihilation processes

We study the transverse momentum distributions of single inclusive hadron production in e+e− annihilation processes. Although the only available experimental data are scarce and quite old, we find that the fundamental features of transverse momentum dependent (TMD) evolution, historically addressed in Drell–Yan processes and, more recently, in Semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering processes, are visible in e+e− annihilations as well. Interesting effects related to its non-perturbative regime can be observed.We test two different parameterizations for the p⊥ dependence of the cross section: the usual Gaussian distribution and a power-law model. We find the latter to be more appropriate in describing this particular set of experimental data, over a relatively large range of p⊥ values. We use this model to map some of the features of the data within the framework of TMD evolution, and discuss the caveats of this and other possible interpretations, related to the one-dimensional nature of the available experimental data.

Implementation of NLO high energy factorization in single inclusive forward hadron production

Single inclusive particle production cross sections in high energy hadron collisions at forward rapidity are an important benchmark process for the CGC picture of small x QCD. Recent calculations of this process have not led to a stable perturbative expansion for this quantity at high transverse momenta. We consider the quark channel production cross section using the new rapidity factorization procedure proposed by Iancu et al. We show that for fixed coupling one does indeed obtain a physically meaningful cross section which is positive and reduces in a controlled way to previous leading order calculations. We also consider a running coupling that depends on the transverse momentum of the produced particle. This gives a stable result which, however, is not fully consistent with previous leading order calculations that use a coordinate space running coupling.

The semi-inclusive jet function in SCET and small radius resummation for inclusive jet production

We introduce a new kind of jet function: the semi-inclusive jet function $J_i(z, \omega_J, \mu)$, which describes how a parton $i$ is transformed into a jet with a jet radius $R$ and energy fraction $z = \omega_J/\omega$, with $\omega_J$ and $\omega$ being the large light-cone momentum component of the jet and the corresponding parton $i$ that initiates the jet, respectively. Within the framework of Soft Collinear Effective Theory (SCET) we calculate both $J_q(z, \omega_J, \mu)$ and $J_g(z, \omega_J, \mu)$ to the next-to-leading order (NLO) for cone and anti-k$_{\rm T}$ algorithms. We demonstrate that the renormalization group (RG) equations for $J_i(z, \omega_J, \mu)$ follow exactly the usual DGLAP evolution, which can be used to perform the $\ln R$ resummation for {\it inclusive} jet cross sections with a small jet radius $R$. We clarify the difference between our RG equations for $J_i(z, \omega_J, \mu)$ and those for the so-called unmeasured jet functions $J_i(\omega_J, \mu)$, widely used in SCET for {\it exclusive} jet production. Finally, we present applications of the new semi-inclusive jet functions to inclusive jet production in $e^+e^-$ and $pp$ collisions. We demonstrate that single inclusive jet production in these collisions shares the same short-distance hard functions as single inclusive hadron production, with only the fragmentation functions $D_i^h(z, \mu)$ replaced by $J_i(z, \omega_J, \mu)$. This can facilitate more efficient higher-order analytical computations of jet cross sections. We further match our $\ln R$ resummation at both LL$_{R}$ and NLL$_{R}$ to fixed NLO results and present the phenomenological implications for single inclusive jet production at the LHC.

Global extraction of the parton-to-pion fragmentation functions at NLO accuracy in QCD

In this review, we discuss the results on the parton-to-pion fragmentation functions obtained in a combined NLO fit to data of single-inclusive hadron production in electron-positron annihilation, proton-proton collisions, and lepton-nucleon deep-inelastic scattering. A more complete discussion can be found in Ref. [1].

Single inclusive forward hadron production at next-to-leading order

We discuss single inclusive hadron production from a high energy quark scattering off a strong target color field in the Color Glass Condensate formalism. Recent calculations of this process at the next-to-leading order accuracy have led to negative cross sections at large transverse momenta. We identify the origin of this problem as an oversubtraction of the rapidity divergence into the Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution equation for the target. We propose a new way to implement the kinematical restriction on the emitted gluons to overcome this difficulty.

Implementing the exact kinematical constraint in the saturation formalism

We revisit the issue of the large negative next-to-leading order (NLO) cross section for single inclusive hadron production in $pA$ collisions in the saturation formalism. By implementing the exact kinematical constraint in the modified dipole splitting functions, two additional positive NLO correction terms are obtained. In the asymptotic large $k_\perp$ limit, we analytically show that these two terms become as large as the negative NLO contributions found in our previous calculation. Furthermore, the numerical results demonstrate that the applicable regime of the saturation formalism can be extended to a larger $k_\perp$ window, where the exact matching between the saturation formalism (in the asymptotic $k_\perp$ regime) and the collinear factorization calculations will have to be performed separately. In addition, after significantly improving the numerical accuracy of the NLO correction, we obtain excellent agreement with the LHC and RHIC data for forward hadron productions.

Single inclusive particle production in proton-nucleus collisions at next-to-leading order in the hybrid formalism

We reconsider the perturbative next-to-leading calculation of the single inclusive hadron production in the framework of the hybrid formalism, applied to hadron production in proton-nucleus collisions. Our analysis, performed in the wave function approach, differs from the previous works in three points. First, we are careful to specify unambiguously the rapidity interval that has to be included in the evolution of the leading-order eikonal scattering amplitude. This is important, since varying this interval by a number of order unity changes the next-to-leading order correction that the calculation is meant to determine. Second, we introduce the explicit requirement that fast fluctuations in the projectile wave function which only exist for a short time are not resolved by the target. This Ioffe time cutoff also strongly affects the next-to-leading order terms. Third, our result does not employ the approximation of a large number of colors. Our final expressions are unambiguous and do not coincide at next-to-leading order with the results available in the literature.

Particle production from the Color Glass Condensate: Proton–nucleus collisions in light of the HERA data

We compute single inclusive hadron production in proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions consistently within the CGC framework. The parameters in the calculations are obtained from electron-proton DIS and standard nuclear geometry. We obtain a good description of the DIS data without an anomalous dimension in the initial condition of the BK evolution and get a good agreement with the available single inclusive proton-proton and proton-nucleus data.

Next-to-leading-order forward hadron production in the small-x regime: the role of rapidity factorization.

Single inclusive hadron production at forward rapidity in high energy p+A collisions is an important probe of the high gluon density regime of QCD and the associated small-x formalism. We revisit an earlier one-loop calculation to illustrate the significance of the "rapidity factorization" approach in this regime. Such factorization separates the very small-x unintegrated gluon density evolution and leads to a new correction term to the physical cross section at one-loop level. Importantly, this rapidity factorization formalism remedies the previous unphysical negative next-to-leading-order contribution to the cross section. It is much more stable with respect to "rapidity" variation when compared to the leading-order calculation and provides improved agreement between theory and experiment in the forward rapidity region.

The search for gluon saturation in pA collisions

In this talk, I reviewed the recent theoretical progress towards the exploration of gluon saturation phenomenon in pA collisions at both RHIC and the LHC. Two important pillars of this exploration are the single inclusive forward hadron productions and forward dihadron correlations, which have both been computed up to one-loop order within the small- x factorization formalism. Furthermore, detailed numerical study for the single inclusive hadron production at next-to-leading order provides us good description of the low transverse momentum data measured in d Au collisions at RHIC with significantly reduced uncertainty. In addition, the one-loop calculation for dihadron productions in pA collisions shows that there is a new type of large logarithm, which is known as the Sudakov factor, arising in the back-to-back correlation limit.