Probing Gluons in Nuclei: the Case of ${\eta }^{\prime }$

Abstract

Using the recently proposed $gg-->et{a}^{\prime }$ effective vertex, we investigate the production of ${\eta }^{\prime }$ from gluon fusion in $pA$ collisions. We show that measuring ${\eta }^{\prime }$ production cross-section at moderate $x_{{\eta }^{\prime }}$ yields direct information on the small $x$ gluon distribution function of the nucleus. At RHIC, the smallest accessible $x$ turns out to be $O(10^{-5})$ and at LHC, it is $O(10^{-8})$. Therefore, ${\eta }^{\prime }$ is an excellent probe of the Color Glass Condensate.

16 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• The Renormalization Group Equation for the Color Glass Condensate
• Production of ${\eta }^{\prime }$ from Thermal Gluon Fusion

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Wilson lines - color charge densities correlators and the production of eta' in the CGC for pp and pA collisions
• Tensor Meson Production in Proton-Proton Collisions from the Color Glass Condensate
• Saturation and Wilson Line Distributions
• Polarized Gluon Distribution Function from ${\eta }^{\prime }$ Production