Phenomenology of QCD with parton saturation

Author(s)

André Veiga Giannini

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Física (IF/SBI)
• Defense date: 2017-06-28

Examining board members

Francisco de Oliveira Durães; Frederique Marie Brigitte Sylvie Grassi; Magno Valerio Trindade Machado; Alessio Mangiarotti; Márcio José Menon

• Advisor: Francisco de Oliveira Durães; Fernando Silveira Navarra

Abstract

The study of the strong interactions at high energies has led to a great interest in the QCD regime where partons carry a small fraction of the colliding hadrons momenta. In this regime these hadrons can be seen as a highly dense and colorful medium. It is believed today that in the domain of high energies and/or high densities the QCD dynamics becomes qualitatively different of the dynamics of the regime of small distances and large momentum transferred. In the parton language this theory is being described in term of the parton ``saturation\", resulting in the formation of high density matter, the Color Glass Condensate (CGC), where the effects of gluon recombination become very important. In this work the effects of parton saturation are considered to study hadronic and photonic processes. Such effects were included using two different approaches: initially they were introduced as non linear higher order corrections in the strong coupling constant in the evolution equations for the parton distributions and later through the so called ``dipole models\'\' with the use of the ``CGC approach\". In the first case we studied the behavior of the proton-proton (antiproton) ($pp(\\bar{p}$)), photon-proton ($\\gamma p$) and photon-photon ($\\gamma\\gamma$) total cross sections and the proton-Air ($pAir$) inelastic cross section and verified that the presence of saturation effects tame the growth of the mentioned cross sections at very high energies. In the second case we have developed five other studies, with the first four focused on the particle production in the central and forward rapidity region in hadronic collisions. Considering at first the forward rapidity region we studied the rapidity and $x$-Feynman distributions of the net baryon production in $pp$, $pA$ and nucleus-nucleus ($AA$) collisions, where a violation of the Feynman scaling in the $x_{F}$ spectra of leading particles has been observed and later the $D$ meson production in $pp$ collisions where we verified that the existence of the so called ``intrinsic charm\" in the projectile wave function changes the $x_{F}$ distribution of such mesons in an important region for cosmic ray physics. Next we present a study regarding the behavior of the average transverse momentum of charged particles produced in $pp$ and $pPb$ collisions with the rapidity and with the energy, $\\langle p_{T}(y,\\sqrt{s})angle$, and showed that the ratio $R = \\langle p_{T}(y,\\sqrt{s})angle / \\langle p_{T}(0,\\sqrt{s})angle$ decreases with the rapidity for a fixed energy, having a similar behavior to that obtained from hydrodynamic models. With the use of the so called ``$k_{T}$-factorization\", in the forth study we have considered the particle production in the central rapidty region in $pp$, $pA$ and $AA$ collisions and showed that the strong coupling constant correction that were recently introduced in the invariant cross section for gluon production of this formalism, lead to a weaker energy dependence of the analyzed observables. Finally, in the fifth study we presented a simple model capable of generate the so called ``azimuthal asymmetries\" in the initial-state of $pA$ collisions and verified that this model describes qualitatively well the transverse momentum dependence of the first even azimuthal harmonic and the first two odd azimuthal harmonics. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 12/17200-0 - The effects of parton saturation on hadronic and photoproduction processes
• Grantee: André Veiga Giannini
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate