Adams, G.S.
$d$ Au --> CHARGED X
nucl-ex
color neutralization
Max results
Sort by Reverse order

Showing 1 of 1 results

Centrality categorization for $R_{p(d)+A}$ in high-energy collisions

The PHENIX collaboration Adare, A. ; Aidala, C. ; Ajitanand, N.N. ; et al.
Phys.Rev.C 90 (2014) 034902, 2014.
Inspire Record 1261055 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.142640

High-energy proton- and deuteron-nucleus collisions provide an excellent tool for studying a wide array of physics effects, including modifications of parton distribution functions in nuclei, gluon saturation, and color neutralization and hadronization in a nuclear environment, among others. All of these effects are expected to have a significant dependence on the size of the nuclear target and the impact parameter of the collision, also known as the collision centrality. In this article, we detail a method for determining centrality classes in p(d)+A collisions via cuts on the multiplicity at backward rapidity (i.e., the nucleus-going direction) and for determining systematic uncertainties in this procedure. For d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV we find that the connection to geometry is confirmed by measuring the fraction of events in which a neutron from the deuteron does not interact with the nucleus. As an application, we consider the nuclear modification factors R_{p(d)+A}, for which there is a potential bias in the measured centrality dependent yields due to auto-correlations between the process of interest and the backward rapidity multiplicity. We determine the bias correction factor within this framework. This method is further tested using the HIJING Monte Carlo generator. We find that for d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV, these bias corrections are small and vary by less than 5% (10%) up to p_T = 10 (20) GeV. In contrast, for p+Pb collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 5.02 TeV we find these bias factors are an order of magnitude larger and strongly p_T dependent, likely due to the larger effect of multi-parton interactions.

3 data tables
Table 1a

Different physical quantities characterizing $d$+Au collisions, and the bias-factor corrections, for nine PHENIX centrality bins.

Table 1b

Different physical quantities characterizing $d$+Au collisions, and the bias-factor corrections, for nine PHENIX centrality bins.

Table 2

Different physical quantities characterizing $d$+Au collisions, and the bias-factor corrections, for four PHENIX centrality bins.