We argue that with an increase of the collision energy, elastic photoproduction of $rho$ mesons on nuclei becomes affected by the significant cross section of photon inelastic diffraction into large masses, which results in the sizable inelastic nucl
ear shadowing correction to $sigma_{gamma A to rho A}$ and the reduced effective $rho$-nucleon cross section. We take these effects into account by combining the vector meson dominance model, which we upgrade to include the contribution of high-mass fluctuations of the photon according to QCD constraints, and the Gribov-Glauber approximation for nuclear shadowing, where the inelastic nuclear shadowing is included by means of cross section fluctuations. The resulting approach allows us to successfully describe the data on elastic $rho$ photoproduction on nuclei in heavy ion UPCs in the $7 {rm GeV} < W_{gamma p} < 46$ GeV energy range and to predict the value of the cross section of coherent $rho$ photoproduction in Pb-Pb UPCs at $sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV in Run 2 at the LHC, $dsigma_{Pb Pb to rho Pb Pb} (y=0)/dy= 560 pm 25$ mb.
We analyze $pA$ interactions at ultra-high energies within the semiclassical approximation for high energy processes accounting for the diffractive processes and a rapid increase with the incident energy of the coherence length. The fluctuations of t
he strength of interaction expected in QCD and momentum conservation are taken into account also. We evaluate the number of wounded nucleons in soft and hard processes, the multiplicity of jets in the proton fragmentation region as a function of the variance of the distribution over the interaction strengths directly measured in forward diffractive $pN$ scattering for RHIC and LHC energies. We argue that these results could be used to test whether parton configurations containing a parton carrying the $xge 0.5$ fraction of the projectile momentum interact significantly weaker than on average. We also study leading twist shadowing and the EMC effect for superdense nuclear matter configurations probed in the events with larger than average number of wounded nucleons.
We examine the role played in double parton interactions (DPI) by the parton--parton correlations originating from perturbative QCD parton splittings. Also presented are the results of the numerical analysis of the integrated DPI cross sections at Te
vatron and LHC energies. To obtain the numerical results the knowledge of the single-parton GPDs gained by the HERA experiments was used to construct the non-perturbative input for generalized double parton distributions. The perturbative two-parton correlations induced by three-parton interactions contribute significantly to resolution of the longstanding puzzle of an excess of multi-jet production events in the back-to-back kinematics observed at the Tevatron.
We demonstrate that perturbative QCD leads to positive 3D parton--parton correlations inside nucleon explaining a factor two enhancement of the cross section of multi-parton interactions observed at Tevatron at $x_ige 0.01$ as compared to the predict
ions of the independent parton approximation. We also find that though perturbative correlations decrease with $x$ decreasing, the nonperturbative mechanism kicks in and should generate correlation which, at $x$ below $10^{-3}$, is comparable in magnitude with the perturbative one for $xsim 0.01$.
We present and discuss the theory and phenomenology of the leading twist theory of nuclear shadowing which is based on the combination of the generalization of the Gribov-Glauber theory, QCD factorization theorems, and the HERA QCD analysis of diffra
ction in lepton-proton deep inelastic scattering (DIS). We apply this technique for the analysis of a wide range of hard processes with nuclei---inclusive DIS on deuterons, medium-range and heavy nuclei, coherent and incoherent diffractive DIS with nuclei, and hard diffraction in proton-nucleus scattering---and make predictions for the effect of nuclear shadowing in the corresponding sea quark and gluon parton distributions. We also analyze the role of the leading twist nuclear shadowing in generalized parton distributions in nuclei and in certain characteristics of final states in nuclear DIS. We discuss the limits of applicability of the leading twist approximation for small x scattering off nuclei and the onset of the black disk regime and methods of detecting it. It will be possible to check many of our predictions in the near future in the studies of the ultraperipheral collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Further checks will be possible in pA collisions at the LHC and forward hadron production at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Detailed tests will be possible at an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) in the USA and at the Large Hadron-Electron Collider (LHeC) at CERN.
We demonstrate that in the back-to-back kinematics the production of four jets in the collision of two partons is suppressed in the leading log approximation of pQCD, compared to the hard processes involving the collision of four partons. We derive t
he basic equation for four-jet production in QCD in terms of the convolution of generalized two-parton distributions of colliding hadrons in the momentum space representation. Our derivation leads to geometrical approach in the impact parameter space close to that suggested within the parton model and used before to describe the four-jet production. We develop the independent parton approximation to the light-cone wave function of the proton. Comparison with the CDF and D0 data shows that the independent parton approximation to the light-cone wave function of the proton is insufficient to explain the data. We argue that the data indicate the presence of significant multiparton correlations in the light-cone wave functions of colliding protons.
We visualize the fundamental property of pQCD: the smaller size of the colorless quark-gluon configurations leads to a more rapid increase of its interaction with energy. Within the frame of dipole model we use the $k_t$ factorization theorem to gene
ralize the DGLAP approximation and/or leading $ln(x_0/x)$ approximation and evaluate the interaction of quark dipole with a target. In the limit of fixed $Q^2$ and $xto 0$ we found the increase with energy of transverse momenta of quark(antiquark) within q$bar q$ pair produced by strongly virtual photon. The average $p^2_t$ is evaluated analytically within the double logarithmic approximation. We demonstrate that the invariant mass$^2$ of the q$bar q$ pair increases with the energy as $M^2_0(x_0/x)^{lambda}$, where $lambdasim 0.4alpha_sN_c/pi$ for transverse photons, and as $sim M^2_0 exp{0.17[(4alpha_sN_c/pi)log(x_0/x)]^{1/2}}$ for longitudinal photons, where $M^2_0 approx 0.7Q^2$ at the energies of the order $s_0sim 10^4$ GeV$^2$ ($x_0sim 10^{-2}$). The magnitude of the effect depends strongly on the small $x$ behavior of the gluon distribution. Similar pattern of the energy dependence of $M^2$ is found in the LO DGLAP approximation generalized to account for $k_t$ factorization. We discuss the impact of the found phenomenon on the dependence of the coherence length on the initial energy and demonstrate that the shape of final hadron state in DIS has biconcave form instead of pancake. Some implications of the found phenomena for the hard processes in pp collisions are discussed.
We summarize how the approach to the black--disk regime (BDR) of strong interactions at TeV energies influences rapidity gap survival in exclusive hard diffraction pp--> p + H + p (H =dijet, bar Q Q, Higgs). Employing a recently developed partonic de
scription of such processes, we discuss (a) the suppression of diffraction at small impact parameters by soft spectator interactions in the BDR; (b) further suppression by inelastic interactions of hard spectator partons in the BDR; (c) effects of correlations between hard and soft interactions, as suggested by various models of proton structure (color fluctuations, spatial correlations of partons). Hard spectator interactions in the BDR substantially reduce the rapidity gap survival probability at LHC energies compared to previously reported estimates.
