Probing fully coherent radiation and parton densities using (virtual) photons at the LHC

Abstract

Prompt photon production in pA collisions has long been suggested as a sensitive probe of the nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs). In this study, we present recent results on another cold nuclear matter effect, namely fully coherent radiation induced by parton multiple scattering, which may influence the nuclear dependence of prompt photon production. Medium-induced radiation effects, implemented in leading-order direct and fragmentation photon processes, are computed for pPb collisions at the LHC. At backward rapidity, photons are sensitive to fully coherent energy loss (FCEL), while at forward rapidity, fully coherent energy gain (FCEG) plays a crucial role due to the dominance of the $qg \to q\gamma$ scattering channel. In contrast, for virtual photon production, the impact of fully coherent radiation is marginal, making Drell-Yan (DY) one of the best ways to probe nuclear PDFs. The power of the DY process is demonstrated by reweighting nPDF sets at next-to-leading order using realistic pseudo-data for LHC Run 3.