Breakdown of QCD factorization at large Feynman x

Abstract

Recent measurements by the BRAHMS collaboration of high-pT hadron production at forward rapidities at RHIC found the relative production rate(d-Au)/(p-p) to be suppressed, rather than enhanced. Examining other known reactions (forward production of light hadrons, the Drell-Yan process, heavy flavor production, etc.), one notes that all of these display a similar property, namely, their cross sections in nuclei are suppressed at large xF. Since this is the region where x2 is minimal, it is tempting to interpret this as a manifestation of coherence, or of a color glass condensate, whereas it is actually a simple consequence of energy conservation and takes place even at low energies. We demonstrate that in all these reactions there is a common suppression mechanism that can be viewed, alternatively, as a consequence of a reduced survival probability for large rapidity gap processes in nuclei, Sudakov suppression, an enhanced resolution of higher Fock states by nuclei, or an effective energy loss that rises linearly with energy. Our calculations agree with data.