Impact of heavy quark and quarkonium data on nuclear gluon PDFs
Résumé
A clear understanding of nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) plays a crucial role in the interpretation of collider data taken at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and in the near future at the Electron-Ion Collider. Even with the recent inclusions of vector boson and light meson production data, the uncertainty of the gluon PDF remains substantial and limits the interpretation of heavy ion collision data. To obtain new constraints on the nuclear gluon PDF, we extend our recent analysis to inclusive quarkonium and open heavy-flavor meson production data from the LHC. This vast new data set covers a wide kinematic range and puts strong constraints on the nuclear gluon PDF down to . The theoretical predictions for these data sets are obtained from a data-driven approach, where proton-proton data are used to determine effective scattering matrix elements. This approach is validated with detailed comparisons to existing next-to-leading order calculations in nonrelativistic QCD for quarkonia and in the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme for the open heavy-flavored mesons. In addition, the uncertainties from the data-driven approach are determined using the Hessian method and accounted for in the PDF fits. This extension of our previous analyses represents an important step toward the next generation of PDFs not only by including new data sets, but also by exploring new methods for future analyses.
Mots clés
meson: production
parton: distribution function
quantum chromodynamics: nonrelativistic
higher-order: 1
heavy ion: scattering
electron nucleon: colliding beams
gluon
quarkonium
interpretation of experiments: CERN LHC Coll
heavy quark
vector boson
S-matrix
Brookhaven RHIC Coll
kinematics
electron nucleus