The STAR Collaboration reports measurements of back-to-back azimuthal correlations of di-$\pi^0$s produced at forward pseudorapidities ($2.6<\eta<4.0$) in $p$+$p$, $p+$Al, and $p+$Au collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV. We observe a clear suppression of the correlated yields of back-to-back $\pi^0$ pairs in $p+$Al and $p+$Au collisions compared to the $p$+$p$ data. The observed suppression of back-to-back pairs as a function of transverse momentum suggests nonlinear gluon dynamics arising at high parton densities. The larger suppression found in $p+$Au relative to $p+$Al collisions exhibits a dependence of the saturation scale, $Q_s^2$, on the mass number, $A$. A linear scaling of the suppression with $A^{1/3}$ is observed with a slope of $-0.09$$\pm$$0.01$.
Relative area of MinBias $pAu/pp$ of back-to-back di-$\pi^0$ correlations at forward pseudorapidities ($2.6<\eta<4.0$) from data
Relative area of MinBias $pAl/pp$ of back-to-back di-$\pi^0$ correlations at forward pseudorapidities ($2.6<\eta<4.0$) from data
Relative area of $pAu/pp$ at b=0 of back-to-back di-$\pi^0$ correlations at forward pseudorapidities ($2.6<\eta<4.0$) from prediction
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