Role of nuclear gluon distribution on particle production in heavy ion collisions

Abstract

The transverse momentum spectra of hadrons are calculated from the unintegrated gluon distribution (UGD) within the kT-factorization framework at small x. Starting from pp collisions, the modification caused by the nuclear medium is incorporated in the UGD at high energies, which is related to the nuclear shadowing phenomenon. Moreover, we consider that particle production from minijet decay is not enough to explain the pT spectra in AA collisions due to collective phenomena that take place after the hard collision. The Boltzmann-Gibbs blast wave distribution is utilized in order to evaluate the distribution of particle production in equilibrium. Data from the ALICE Collaboration for PbPb collisions at √s=2.76 TeV are analyzed, and the nuclear modification factor for pion production is computed.