Inclusive and "exclusive" cross sections in the regime of multiple parton collisions
Abstract
The large luminosity and the increased kinematical domain accessible at the LHC will allow to isolate large numbers of events with multiple parton collisions. Interestingly, the hadron is probed in different points contemporarily in the process, which allows to obtain information on the correlations between partons in the hadron structure. The whole experimentally accessible information on multiple parton collisions consists in the probability distribution of the elementary interactions, while the inclusive cross sections, usually considered in large pt processes, acquire a precise statistical meaning as moments of the multiplicity distribution. Conversely different and more "exclusive" cross sections become experimentally viable, providing complementary information on the interaction dynamics. The matter is discussed in details in the case of hadron-hadron collisions and the role of parton correlations is outlined both in the inclusive and in the "exclusive" cross sections.