Leading twist coherent diffraction on nuclei in deep inelastic scattering at small x and nuclear shadowing

Abstract

We extend the theory of leading twist nuclear shadowing to calculate leading twist nuclear diffractive parton distribution functions (nDPDFs). We observe that the quark and gluon nPDFs have different patterns of the $A$-dependence. It is found that the probability of diffraction in the quark channel increases with $A$, reaching about 30% at $x\sim 10^{-4}$ for $A\sim 200$, and weakly decreases with $Q^2$. In the gluon channel, the probability of diffraction is large for all nuclei ($\sim 40$% for heavy nuclei at $x\sim 10^{-4}$ and $Q_0^2\sim 4$ GeV${}^2$), it weakly depends on $A$ and it decreases rather fast with increasing $Q^2$ -- the probability decreases by approximately a factor of two as $Q^2$ changes from 4 GeV${}^2$ to 100 GeV${}^2$. We also find that nuclear shadowing breaks down Regge factorization of nDPDFs, which is satisfied experimentally in the nucleon case. All these novel effects in nDPDFs are large enough to be straightforwardly measured in ultraperipheral collisions at the LHC.

14 pages, 7 figures. Extended discussion. Final version published in PLB

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• Small-x Physics: From HERA to LHC and beyond
• Probing small $x$ parton densities in ultraperipheral $AA$ and $pA$ collisions at the LHC
• Saturation in diffractive deep inelastic eA scattering
• Model independent method for determination of the DIS structure of free neutron
• Could saturation effects be visible in a future electron-ion collider?
• Nuclear shadowing in Glauber-Gribov theory with Q2-evolution
• Novel Cross Section Ratios as Possible Signals of Saturation in UPCs
• Coherent and incoherent diffractive hadron production in pA collisions and gluon saturation
• Rapidity gap distribution in diffractive dissociation: predictions for future electron-ion colliders
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• Mass dependence of nuclear shadowing at small Bjorken-x from diffractive scattering
• Nuclear shadowing in deep inelastic scattering on nuclei: a closer look
• Leading twist nuclear shadowing and suppression of hard coherent diffraction in proton-nucleus scattering
• Open questions in QCD at high parton density
• Statistical properties of partonic configurations and diffractive dissociation in high-energy electron-nucleus scattering