Effect of meson cloud on the jet nuclear modification factor in $pA$ collisions

Abstract

We study the effect of the nucleon meson cloud on centrality dependence of the jet nuclear modification factor $R_{pA}$. We find that the meson-baryon Fock components may lead to a noticeable deviation of $R_{pA}$ from unity. Our results for $R_{pA}$ show the same tendency as that observed by ATLAS in $p+Pb$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=5.02$ TeV. The meson cloud suppresses the central jet events and enhances the peripheral jet events. But quantitatively the effect is somewhat smaller than in the data.