Towards the Test of Saturation Physics Beyond Leading Logarithm

Understand

We present results from the first next-to-leading order (NLO) numerical analysis of forward hadron production in pA collisions in the small-x saturation formalism.

• Using parton distributions and fragmentation functions at NLO, as well as the dipole amplitude from the solution to the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation with running coupling, together with the NLO corrections to the hard coefficients, we obtain a good description of the available RHIC data in dAu collisions.
• We also comment on the results in the large p_T region beyond the saturation scale.
• Furthermore, we make predictions for forward hadron production in pPb collisions at the LHC.