Calculation of Direct photon production in nuclear collisions

Prompt photons produced in a hard reaction are not expected to be accompanied by any final state interaction, either energy loss or absorption and one should not expect any nuclear effects at high pT . However, data from the PHENIX experiment indicates large-pT suppression in d+Au and central Au+Au collisions that cannot be accompanied by coherent phenomena. We propose a mechanism based on the energy sharing problem at large pT near the kinematic limit that is induced by multiple initial state interactions and that improves the agreement of calculations with PHENIX data. We calculate inclusive direct photon production cross sections in p+p collisions at RHIC and LHC energies using the color dipole approach without any additional parameter. Our predictions are in good agreement with the available data. Within the same framework, we calculate direct photon production rates in d+A and A+A collisions at RHIC energy. We also provide predictions for the same process in p+A collisions at LHC energy. Since the kinematic region where the expected suppression manifests can be achieved also at forward rapidity, we present a comparison of forward rapidity to midrapidity behaviour. We also include and analyze the contribution of gluon shadowing as a leading twist shadowing correction that modifies nuclear effects especially at small pT .