High energy pA collisions in the color glass condensate approach II. Quark production

Abstract

We compute the production of quark-antiquark pairs in high energy collisions between a small and a large projectile, as in proton-nucleus collisions, in the framework of the Color Glass Condensate. We derive a general expression for quark pair-production, which is not k_t-factorizable. However, k_t-factorization is recovered in the limit of large mass pairs or large quark--anti-quark momenta. Our results are amenable to a simple interpretation and suggest how multi-parton correlations at small x can be quantified in high-energy proton/deuteron-nucleus collisions.

Comments: 37 pages, 20 postscript figures