Probing Gluon Saturation with Angular Correlations in Forward p-p and p-A Collisions

5 May 2026, 16:50
20m
Sala SATURNO A, First Floor (Hotel Carlton)

Sala SATURNO A, First Floor

Hotel Carlton

Talk WG2 Small-x, Diffraction and Vector Mesons WG2 Small-x, diffraction and vector mesons

Speaker

Wenbin Zhao

Description

Dihadron angular correlations in forward proton–proton and proton–nucleus collisions offer a sensitive probe of gluon saturation effects, where both gluon saturation and parton shower dynamics contribute to the observed de-correlation between back-to-back hadron pairs. In this talk, we employ the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) framework to conduct a detailed numerical investigation of dihadron correlations at forward rapidities in p-p and p-A collisions at RHIC and the LHC. We adopt the improved Transverse Momentum Dependent factorization scheme tailored for small-$x$ physics and incorporate parton shower effects by the corresponding Sudakov factor. Our results show good agreement with STAR data. Additionally, we provide predictions for dihadron correlations for the FOCAL kinematic range at the LHC [1]. We also present full CGC calculations of heavy hadron correlations coupled with Sudakov resummation, which successfully describe di–D meson correlations over the entire angular range in p-p and p-Pb collisions at the LHC. We further demonstrate that heavy flavor observables are even more sensitive to gluon saturation effects than light hadrons [2]. We also discuss the extension of these dihadron correlation studies to electron–ion collisions.

[1] P. Caucal, Z. B. Kang, P. Korcyl, F. Salazar, B. Schenke, T. Stebel, R. Venugopalan and W. Zhao, [arXiv:2512.21466].
[2] F. Salazar, B. Schenke and W. Zhao, in preparation.

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