Rapidity and species dependence of particle production at large transverse momentum for $d$+Au collisions at \sqrt s_NN = 200 GeV

Abstract

We determine rapidity asymmetry in the production of charged pions, protons and anti-protons for large transverse momentum (pT) for d+Au collisions at \sqrt s_NN = 200 GeV. The identified hadrons are measured in the rapidity regions |y| < 0.5 and 0.5 < |y| < 1.0 for the pT range 2.5 < pT < 10 GeV/c. We observe significant rapidity asymmetry for charged pion and proton+anti-proton production in both rapidity regions. The asymmetry is larger for 0.5 < |y| < 1.0 than for |y|< 0.5 and is almost independent of particle type. The measurements are compared to various model predictions employing multiple scattering, energy loss, nuclear shadowing, saturation effects, and recombination, and also to a phenomenological parton model. We find that asymmetries are sensitive to model parameters and show model-preference. The rapidity dependence of \pi^{-}/\pi^{+} and \bar{p}/p ratios in peripheral d+Au and forward neutron-tagged events are used to study the contributions of valence quarks and gluons to particle production at high pT. The results are compared to calculations based on NLO pQCD and other measurements of quark fragmentation functions.