Search

We discuss the exclusive $J/\psi$ photoproduction process, as measured recently at LHCb, as a means of constraining and ultimately determining the low $x$ and low $Q$ gluon PDF. The scale dependence of the theoretical prediction for this process is shown to be systematically improved via a taming of the known $\bar{\text{MS}}$ result, this amounts to resumming logarithmically enhanced small-$x$ terms and implementing a small-$Q$ power correction. The cross section level predictions allow the behaviour of the gluon PDF in the low $(x, Q)$ domain to be determined., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Proceedings of Light Cone 19 - QCD on the light cone: from hadrons to heavy ions (LC2019), submitted to PoS

In recent years information on the transversity distribution $h_1$ has been obtained combining the Collins asymmetry results from semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) data on transversely polarized nucleon targets with the information on the fragmentation function of a transversely polarized quark from the asymmetries measured in $e^+e^-$ annihilation into hadrons. An alternative method was proposed long time ago, which does not require the $e^+e^-$ data, but allows one to get ratios of the $u$ and $d$ quark transversity distributions from the SIDIS data alone. The method utilizes the ratio of the difference of the Collins asymmetries of positively and negatively charged hadrons produced on transversely polarized proton and deuteron targets. We have applied this method to the COMPASS proton and deuteron data, and extracted the ratio $h_1^d/h_1^u$. The results are compared to those obtained in a previous point--by--point extraction based both on SIDIS and $e^+e^-$ data., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

We summarise the effects of including jet data from the LHC in the MMHT PDF extraction. We also present the latest results on the preferred value of the strong coupling α S ( M 2 Z ) αS(MZ2) in a number of fit variations. The best current value with all new data is α S ( M 2 Z )=0.1176 αS(MZ2)=0.1176 .

© 2017 Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). We present an updated and improved extraction of the low-x gluon distribution from the HERA and LHCb exclusive J/ψ production data in the context of kT factorisation. Critically, we use a more precise expression for the photon flux and updated rapidity gap survival factors. In collinear factorisation, exclusive J/ψ photoproduction receives large perturbative corrections at next-to-leading order which depend sensitively on the factorisation scale. This prevents the use of the available data to extract a gluon PDF within this framework. Attempts to understand and overcome the problems caused by the large perturbative corrections are discussed.

I consider the effects of including a variety of new LHC data sets into the MMHT approach for PDF determination. I consider the impact of fitting new LHC and Tevatron data, which leads to clear improvements in some PDF uncertainties. There are specific issues with ATLAS 7 TeV jet data and I include a discussion of the treatment of correlated uncertainties and briefly the effects of NNLO corrections. I also present preliminary results with the inclusion of the high precison final ATLAS 7 TeV W,Z rapidity-dependent data.

We study exclusive vector meson photoproduction, $\gamma p \to V + p$ with $V=J/\psi$ or $\Upsilon$, at NLO in collinear factorisation, in order to examine what may be learnt about the gluon distribution at very low $x$. We examine the factorisation scale dependence of the predictions. We argue that, using knowledge of the NLO corrections, terms enhanced by a large $\ln(1/\xi)$ can be reabsorbed in the LO part by a choice of the factorisation scale. (In these exclusive processes $\xi$ takes the role of Bjorken-$x$.) Then, the scale dependence coming from the remaining NLO contributions has no $\ln(1/\xi)$ enhancements. As a result, we find that predictions for the amplitude of $\Upsilon$ production are stable to within about $\pm 15\%$. This will allow data for the exclusive process $p p \to p\Upsilon p$ at the LHC, particularly from LHCb, to be included in global parton analyses to constrain the gluon PDF down to $x\sim 10^{-5}$. Moreover, the study of exclusive $J/\psi$ photoproduction indicates that the gluon density found in the recent global PDF analyses is too small at low $x$ and low scales., Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures. Text significantly improved, references added, version to be published in J.Phys.G

We will cover a number of topics: some clarifications on MMHT PDFs with varying quark masses; a review of the fit to final HERA data, with consequences for MMHT PDFs, and a study of the fit quality; a brief introduction to topics just starting investigation, mainly the inclusion of new LHC data sets.