Large-pT inclusive π0 production in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC

✍ Scribed by Sangyong Jeon; Jamal Jalilian-Marian; Ina Sarcevic

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 293 KB
• Volume: 723
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0375-9474
• DOI: 10.1016/s0375-9474(03)01447-7

✦ Synopsis

We present results for the large-p T inclusive π 0 production in p-p and A-A collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. We include the full next-to-leading order radiative corrections, O(α 3 s ), and nuclear effects such as parton energy loss and nuclear shadowing. We find the next-to-leading order corrections and the parton energy loss effect to be large and p T -dependent, while the nuclear shadowing effects are small (< 10%). We calculate the ratio of prompt photons to neutral pions produced in heavy-ion collisions and show that at RHIC energies this ratio increases with p T approaching one at p T ∼ 8 GeV, due to the large suppression of π 0 production. We show that at the LHC, this ratio has a steep p T -dependence and approaches 25% effect at p T ∼ 40 GeV. We discuss theoretical uncertainties inherent in our calculation, such as choice of the renormalization, factorization and fragmentation scales and the K-factors which signify the size of higher-order corrections.