Nuclear Modification Factor of Neutral Pions in the Forward and Backward Regions in p-Pb Collisions

(LHCb Collaboration)

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The nuclear modification factor of neutral pions is measured in proton-lead collisions collected at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon of 8.16 TeV with the LHCb detector. The ?0 production cross section is measured differentially in transverse momentum (pT) for 1.5<pT<10.0 GeV and in center-of-mass pseudorapidity (?c.m.) regions 2.5<?c.m.<3.5 (forward) and -4.0<?c.m.<-3.0 (backward) defined relative to the proton beam direction. The forward measurement shows a sizable suppression of ?0 production, while the backward measurement shows the first evidence of ?0 enhancement in proton-lead collisions at the LHC. Together, these measurements provide precise constraints on models of nuclear structure and particle production in high-energy nuclear collisions. copy; 2023 CERN, for the LHCb Collaboration.

Original languageEnglish
Article number042302
Pages (from-to)1-12
Number of pages12
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume131
Issue number4
Early online date24 Jul 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Kari Eskola, Ilkka Helenius, Heikki Mäntysaari, Petja Paakkinen, and Hannu Paukkunen for providing theoretical predictions. We express our gratitude to our colleagues in the CERN accelerator departments for the excellent performance of the LHC. We thank the technical and administrative staff at the LHCb institutes. We acknowledge support from CERN and from the national agencies: CAPES, CNPq, FAPERJ, and FINEP (Brazil); MOST and NSFC (China); CNRS/IN2P3 (France); BMBF, DFG, and MPG (Germany); INFN (Italy); NWO (Netherlands); MNiSW and NCN (Poland); MEN/IFA (Romania); MICINN (Spain); SNSF and SER (Switzerland); NASU (Ukraine); STFC (United Kingdom); DOE NP and NSF (U.S.). We acknowledge the computing resources that are provided by CERN, IN2P3 (France), KIT and DESY (Germany), INFN (Italy), SURF (Netherlands), PIC (Spain), GridPP (United Kingdom), CSCS (Switzerland), IFIN-HH (Romania), CBPF (Brazil), Polish WLCG (Poland), and NERSC (U.S.). We are indebted to the communities behind the multiple open-source software packages on which we depend. Individual groups or members have received support from ARC and ARDC (Australia); Minciencias (Colombia); AvH Foundation (Germany); EPLANET, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, and ERC (European Union); A*MIDEX, ANR, IPhU, and Labex P2IO, and Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France); Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences of CAS, CAS PIFI, CAS CCEPP, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou (China); GVA, XuntaGal, GENCAT, and Prog. Atracción Talento, CM (Spain); SRC (Sweden); the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Society, and UKRI (United Kingdom).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 American Physical Society. All rights reserved.

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