Forward neutral pion production in p+p and d+Au collisions at s(NN)**(1/2) = 200-GeV.

The STAR collaboration Adams, J. ; Aggarwal, M.M. ; Ahammed, Z. ; et al.
Phys.Rev.Lett. 97 (2006) 152302, 2006.
Inspire Record 710186 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.98968

Measurements of the production of forward pi0 mesons from p+p and d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV are reported. The p+p yield generally agrees with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations. The d+Au yield per binary collision is suppressed as eta increases, decreasing to ~30% of the p+p yield at =4.00, well below shadowing expectations. Exploratory measurements of azimuthal correlations of the forward pi0 with charged hadrons at eta~0 show a recoil peak in p+p that is suppressed in d+Au at low pion energy. These observations are qualitatively consistent with a saturation picture of the low-x gluon structure of heavy nuclei.

7 data tables

Inclusive $\pi^{0}$ cross section for p+p collisions versus the leading $\pi^{0}$ energy ($E_{\pi}$) averaged over 5 GeV bins at fixed pseudorapidity ($\eta$). The error bars combine statistical and point-to-point systematic errors. The curves are NLO pQCD calculations using two sets of fragmentation functions (FF).

Inclusive $\pi^{0}$ cross section per binary collision for d+Au collisions, as in Fig. 1. The curves are calculations described in the text. (Inset) Diphoton invariant mass spectrum for data (stars), normalized to simulation (histogram).

Nuclear modification factor ($R_{dAu}$) for minimum-bias d+Au collisions versus transverse momentum ($p_{T}$). The solid circles are for $\pi^{0}$ mesons. The open circles and boxes are for negative hadrons [10]. The error bars are statistical, while the shaded boxes are point-to-point systematic errors. (Inset) $R_{dAu}$ for $\pi^{0}$ mesons with the ratio of curves in Figs. 2 and 1.

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