Extent of sensitivity of single photon production to parton distribution functions

Abstract

We have studied the production of single isolated prompt photons in high energy proton-proton collisions at the RHIC ($\sqrt{s}$= 200 GeV) and the LHC ($\sqrt{s}$= 7 TeV) energies within the frame work of perturbative QCD upto next-to leading order of strong coupling (${\alpha }_s$). We have used five different parameterizations of parton distribution function (PDF) starting from the old CTEQ4M to the new CT10 distributions and compared our results with the recent single prompt photon data from the PHENIX and the CMS collaborations. The prompt photon cross-section is found to be described equally well by all the PDF's within the experimental errors at the RHIC and the LHC energies. The deviation in the prompt photon yield for different PDF sets is within $\pm$ 20% when compared to CTEQ4M. The diphoton measurement could be a potential candidate to constrain the gluon distribution inside the proton.

Minor revision in text, to appear in Pramana- journal of Physics

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• The effect of neutron skin on inclusive prompt photon production in Pb~+~Pb collisions at the LHC