Slicing Pomerons in ultraperipheral collisions using forward neutrons from nuclear breakup

Abstract

We argue that measurements of forward neutrons from nuclear breakup in inclusive high energy photon-nucleus ($\gamma A$) scattering provide a novel way to study small-$x$ dynamics of QCD in heavy-ion ultraperipheral collisions (UPCs). Using models for hadronic fluctuations of the real photon and neutron emission in nuclear fragmentation, we calculate the distribution over the number of evaporation neutrons produced in $\gamma Pb$ collisions at the LHC. We show that it is correlated with the number of wounded nucleons (inelastic collisions) and, hence, can constrain the mechanism of nuclear shadowing and its $x$ dependence.