Mapping color fluctuations in the photon in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

We model effects of color fluctuations (CFs) in the light-cone photon wave function and for the first time make predictions for the distribution over the number of wounded nucleons $\nu$ in the inelastic photon-nucleus scattering. We show that CFs lead to a dramatic enhancement of this distribution at $\nu =1$ and large $\nu >10$. We also study the implications of different scales and CFs in the photon wave function on the total transverse energy $\Sigma E_T$ and other observables in inelastic $\gamma A$ scattering with different triggers. Our predictions can be tested in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus ultraperipheral collisions at the LHC and will help to map CFs, whose first indications have already been observed at the LHC.

11 pages, 4 figures. Matches the final published version

References in corpus (2)

• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
• The Physics of Ultraperipheral Collisions at the LHC

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Two-particle azimuthal correlations in photonuclear ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV with ATLAS
• Global analysis of color fluctuation effects in proton- and deuteron-nucleus collisions at RHIC and the LHC
• Selected topics in diffraction with protons and nuclei: past, present, and future
• Slow neutron production as a probe of hadron formation in high-energy ${\gamma }^{\ast }A$ reactions
• New opportunities at the photon energy frontier