Production of ${\pi }^0$ and $\eta$ mesons up to high transverse momentum in pp collisions at 2.76 TeV

Abstract

The invariant differential cross sections for inclusive ${\pi }^0$ and $\eta$ mesons at midrapidity were measured in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=2.76$ TeV for transverse momenta $0.4<p_{\mathrm{T}}<40$ GeV/$c$ and $0.6<p_{\mathrm{T}}<20$ GeV/$c$, respectively, using the ALICE detector. This large range in $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ was achieved by combining various analysis techniques and different triggers involving the electromagnetic calorimeter (EMCal). In particular, a new single-cluster, shower-shape based method was developed for the identification of high-$p_{\mathrm{T}}$ neutral pions, which exploits that the showers originating from their decay photons overlap in the EMCal. The measured cross sections are found to exhibit a similar power-law behavior with an exponent of about $6.3$. Next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations differ from the measured cross sections by about $30$% for the ${\pi }^0$, and between $30$-$50$% for the $\eta$ meson, while generator-level simulations with PYTHIA 8.2 describe the data to better than $10$-$30$%, except at $p_{\mathrm{T}}<1$ GeV/$c$. The new data can therefore be used to further improve the theoretical description of ${\pi }^0$ and $\eta$ meson production.

34 pages, 11 captioned figures, 8 tables, authors from page 28, published version figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/3396

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• Pion Fragmentation Functions at High Energy Colliders
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• Performance of the ALICE Electromagnetic Calorimeter
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