Gluon saturation in $pA$ collisions at the LHC: KLN model predictions for hadron multiplicities

Abstract

The upcoming p+Pb run at the LHC will probe the nuclear gluon distribution at very small Bjorken x (from $x\sim 10^{-4}$ at mid-rapidity down to $x\sim 10^{-6}$ in the proton fragmentation region) and will allow to test approaches based on parton saturation. Here, we present the predictions of the KLN model for hadron multiplicities and multiplicity distributions in p+Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 4.4 TeV. We also compare the model to the existing pp, dA and AA data from RHIC and LHC.

Comments: 7 pages, 7 figures; Added a note with comparison to the pPb LHC data from the ALICE Collaboration