Distribution of linearly polarized gluons inside a large nucleus

Abstract

The distribution of linearly polarized gluons inside a large nucleus is studied in the framework of the color glass condensate. We find that the Weizsäcker-Williams distribution saturates the positivity bound at large transverse momenta and is suppressed at small transverse momenta, whereas the dipole distribution saturates the bound for any value of the transverse momentum. We also discuss processes in which both distributions of linearly polarized gluons can be probed.

Comments: slightly extended discussion, typos fixed, matches journal version