Narrow Results

The high parton density regime of the quantum chromodynamics (QCD), where the physics of parton saturation is expected to be dominant, is briefly discussed. Some phenomenological aspects of saturation are described, mainly focusing on possible signatures of the nonlinear QCD dynamics in the heavy quark production in electron–proton/nucleus collisions. Implications of these effects in the heavy quark production in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions are also presented.

We briefly review some selected topics in the small x physics. In particular, we discuss the progress in the problem related to the resummation at small x and the parton saturation phenomena. Finally we discuss some phenomenological applications to deep inelastic scattering, hadron and heavy ion collisions.

We review the recent progress on the calculations on the inclusive forward hadron production within the saturation formalism. After introducing the concept of perturbative parton saturation and nonlinear evolution we discuss the formalism for the forward hadron production at high energy in the leading and next-to-leading order. Numerical results are presented and compared with the experimental data on forward hadron production in $dA$ and $pA$. We discuss the problem of the negativity of the NLO cross-section at high transverse momenta, study its origin in detail and present possible improvements which include the corrected kinematics and the suitable choice of the rapidity cutoff.

An approximate analytical solution of the Balitsky–Kovchegov (BK) equation using the homotopy perturbation method (HPM) is suggested in this work. We carried out our work in perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) (pQCD) dipole picture of deep inelastic scattering (DIS). The BK equation in momentum space with some change of variables and truncation of the Balitsky–Fadin–Kuraev–Lipatov (BFKL) kernel can be reduced to Fisher–Kolmogorov–Petrovsky–Piscounov (FKPP) equation. The observed geometric scaling phenomena are similar to the travelling wave solution of the FKPP equation. We solved the BK equation using the HPM. The obtained solution in this work also suggests the travelling wave nature of the measured scattering amplitude $N(k,Y)$ plotted at various rapidities. We also extracted the saturation momentum, $Q_s^2(Y)$, from the obtained solution and plotted it against different rapidities. The result obtained in this work can be helpful for various phenomenological studies in high-density QCD.

We present the first steps in an effort to incorporate the physics of transverse spin asymmetries into the saturation formalism of high energy QCD. We consider a simple model in which a transversely polarized quark scatters on a proton or nuclear target. Using the light-cone perturbation theory the hadron production cross section can be written as a convolution of the light-cone wave function squared and the interaction with the target. To generate the single transverse spin asymmetry (STSA) either the wave function squared or the interaction with the target has to be T-odd. In this work we use the lowest-order q → q G wave function squared, which is T-even, generating the STSA from the T-odd interaction with the target mediated by an odderon exchange. We study the properties of the obtained STSA, some of which are in qualitative agreement with experiment: STSA increases with increasing projectile x_F and is a non-monotonic function of the transverse momentum k_T. Our mechanism predicts that the quark STSA in polarized proton–nucleus collisions should be much smaller than in polarized proton–proton collisions. We also observe that the STSA for prompt photons due to our mechanism is zero within the accuracy of the approximation.

We study two-particle long-range rapidity correlations arising in the early stages of heavy ion collisions in the saturation/Color Glass Condensate framework, assuming for simplicity that one colliding nucleus is much larger than the other. We calculate the two-gluon production cross section while including all-order saturation effects in the heavy nucleus with the lowest-order rescattering in the lighter nucleus. We find four types of correlations in the two-gluon production cross section: (i) geometric correlations, (ii) HBT correlations accompanied by a back-to-back maximum, (iii) away-side correlations, and (iv) near-side azimuthal correlations which are long-range in rapidity. The geometric correlations (i) are due to the fact that nucleons are correlated by simply being confined within the same nucleus and may lead to long-range rapidity correlations for the produced particles without strong azimuthal angle dependence. Somewhat surprisingly, long-range rapidity correlations (iii) and (iv) have exactly the same amplitudes along with azimuthal and rapidity shapes: one centered around Δϕ = π with the other one centered around Δϕ = 0 (here Δϕ is the azimuthal angle between the two produced gluons). We thus observe that the early-time CGC dynamics in nucleus-nucleus collisions generates azimuthal non-flow correlations which are qualitatively different from jet correlations by being long-range in rapidity. If strong enough, they have the potential of mimicking the elliptic (and higher-order even-harmonic) flow in the di-hadron correlators: one may need to take them into account in the experimental determination of the flow observables.

I discuss the saturation regime of QCD: the weak-coupling regime that describes large parton densities inside hadrons and the resulting high-energy behavior of scattering amplitudes. I briefly review past successes in the context of deep inelastic scattering at HERA and forward particle production at RHIC, and I present some recent progresses that significantly improved our understanding of high-energy scattering in QCD.