The High Density Effects in Heavy Quark Production at pA Colliders

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the role of the high density effects in the heavy quark production cross section in $pA$ processes at RHIC and LHC. We use, as initial condition, a gluon distribution consistent with fixed target nuclear data and the Glauber-Mueller approach to describe the high density effects. We show that this process can be used as a probe of the presence of the high density effects. Moreover, we include these effects in the calculation of the heavy quark production in $AA$ collisions, verifying that they cannot be disregarded both in the estimates of quarkonium suppression and in the initial conditions of the quark-gluon plasma.