B-hadron Production in Proton-Nucleus Collisions and Modification of Gluon Distributions in Nuclei

Me-Lin Huang；W-Y. P. Hwang

Chinese Journal of Physics

30卷1期（1992 / 02 / 01）

97 - 106

英文

We investigate production of hadrons containing bottom quarks (B-hadrons) in proton-nucleus collisions to shed some light on the prospect of probing possible modification of the gluon distribution of a nucleon in a nucleus. Specifically, leading-order strong interaction processes qq→QQ and gg→QQ are used where q, Q, and g denote a light quark, a heavy quark, and a gluon, respectively. To illustrate the point, we compare predictions obtained by using naive extensions of the various models, including resealing, quark cluster, and pion excess, to the gluon sector so as to describe modification of the gluon distribution of a nucleon in the nucleus (i.e. the EMC or nuclear effect). Although there is clearly room for improvement concerning our calculation, the numerical results encourage strongly usage of production of B-hadrons in proton-nucleus collisions to pinpoint modification of the gluon distribution of a nucleon in a nucleus.