Hard probes in heavy ion collisions at the LHC: PDFs, shadowing and $pA$ collisions

This manuscript is the outcome of the subgroup ``PDFs, shadowing and $pA$ collisions from the CERN workshop ``Hard Probes in Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC. In addition to the experimental parameters for $pA$ collisions at the LHC, the issues discussed are factorization in nuclear collisions, nuclear parton distributions (nPDFs), hard probes as the benchmark tests of factorization in $pA$ collisions at the LHC, and semi-hard probes as observables with potentially large nuclear effects. Also, novel QCD phenomena in $pA$ collisions at the LHC are considered. The importance of the $pA$ program at the LHC is emphasized.