Probing Saturation Effect in Heavy Meson Pair Correlation in Forward pA Collisions
Abstract
Forward two-particle correlations in pA collisions have long been recognized as a particularly sensitive observable for exploring gluon saturation effects. In the back-to-back regime, two-particle correlations receive substantial contributions from both soft-gluon radiation and saturation effects. In this work, we study heavy meson pair correlations in forward proton-nucleus collisions by incorporating a unified Sudakov resummation for heavy meson pair correlations in the Color Glass Condensate effective theory. Our results are in good agreement with the LHCb Δϕ measurements for D0D̅0 pairs in forward pp and pA collisions, as well as with the measurements of J/ψ pairs from bb̅ decays in forward pp collisions. We further present predictions for the Δϕ distribution and azimuthal anisotropies of DD̅ and BB̅ correlations in the forward rapidity region at the Large Hadron Collider. A pronounced mass hierarchy is found in both the nuclear modification factor RpA and the azimuthal anisotropy ratio ⟨ cos 2ϕqP ⟩pA/⟨ cos 2ϕqP ⟩pp, with stronger suppression for bottom meson pairs than for charm meson pairs. As the rapidity increases, the suppression becomes more pronounced while the mass hierarchy remains robust. This study will help us to search for the saturation signal via heavy-meson pair correlations in forward pA collisions.
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BibTeX
@misc{gao2026probing,
title = {{Probing Saturation Effect in Heavy Meson Pair Correlation in Forward $pA$ Collisions}},
author = {Zhan Gao and Cyrille Marquet and Yu Shi and Bo-Wen Xiao},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.01527},
eprint = {2605.01527},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.01527},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Probing Saturation Effect in Heavy Meson Pair Correlation in Forward pA Collisions
AU - Zhan Gao
AU - Cyrille Marquet
AU - Yu Shi
AU - Bo-Wen Xiao
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.01527
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.01527
AB - Forward two-particle correlations in pA collisions have long been recognized as a particularly sensitive observable for exploring gluon saturation effects. In the back-to-back regime, two-particle correlations receive substantial contributions from both soft-gluon radiation and saturation effects. In this work, we study heavy meson pair correlations in forward proton-nucleus collisions by incorporating a unified Sudakov resummation for heavy meson pair correlations in the Color Glass Condensate effective theory. Our results are in good agreement with the LHCb Δϕ measurements for D^0D̅^0 pairs in forward pp and pA collisions, as well as with the measurements of J/ψ pairs from bb̅ decays in forward pp collisions. We further present predictions for the Δϕ distribution and azimuthal anisotropies of DD̅ and BB̅ correlations in the forward rapidity region at the Large Hadron Collider. A pronounced mass hierarchy is found in both the nuclear modification factor R_pA and the azimuthal anisotropy ratio ⟨ cos 2ϕ_qP ⟩_pA/⟨ cos 2ϕ_qP ⟩_pp, with stronger suppression for bottom meson pairs than for charm meson pairs. As the rapidity increases, the suppression becomes more pronounced while the mass hierarchy remains robust. This study will help us to search for the saturation signal via heavy-meson pair correlations in forward pA collisions.
ER -