Spatial Variation of Nuclear Structure Functions and Heavy Quark Production

Abstract

We explore how nuclear modifications to the free nucleon structure functions (also known as shadowing) affect heavy quark production in collisions at different impact parameters. We assume that the nuclear modifications arise from a density dependent effect such as gluon recombination and are thus proportional to the local density. We calculate the dependence of charm and bottom quark production on impact parameter and show that density dependent modifications can lead to significant reductions in the heavy quark production cross sections in central relative to peripheral interactions.