Probing colored glass via $q\bar{q}$ photoproduction

Abstract

In this paper, we calculate the cross-section for the photoproduction of quark-antiquark pairs in the peripheral collision of ultra-relativistic nuclei, by treating the color field of the nuclei within the Color Glass Condensate model. We find that this cross-section is sensitive to the saturation scale $Q_s^2$ that characterizes the model. In particular, the transverse momentum spectrum of the produced pairs could be used to measure the properties of the color glass condensate.

Comments: 25 pages LaTeX document - A reference and some footnotes added (version to appear in Nucl. Phys. A)