https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4575-x
Special Article - Tools for Experiment and Theory
Towards an automated tool to evaluate the impact of the nuclear modification of the gluon density on quarkonium, D and B meson production in proton–nucleus collisions
1
IPNO, Université Paris-Saclay, Univ. Paris-Sud, CNRS/IN2P3, 91406, Orsay, France
2
Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
* e-mail: lansberg@in2p3.fr
Received:
27
October
2016
Accepted:
12
December
2016
Published online:
27
December
2016
We propose a simple and model-independent procedure to account for the impact of the nuclear modification of the gluon density as encoded in nuclear collinear PDF sets on two-to-two partonic hard processes in proton–nucleus collisions. This applies to a good approximation to quarkonium, D and B meson production, generically referred to 
. Our procedure consists in parametrising the square of the parton scattering amplitude, 
and constraining it from the proton–proton data. Doing so, we have been able to compute the corresponding nuclear modification factors for 
, 
and 
as a function of y and 
at 
and 8 TeV in the kinematics of the various LHC experiments in a model independent way. It is of course justified since the most important ingredient in such evaluations is the probability of each kinematical configuration. Our computations for D mesons can also be extended to B meson production. To further illustrate the potentiality of the tool, we provide – for the first time – predictions for the nuclear modification factor for 
production in 
Pb collisions at the LHC.
© The Author(s), 2016
