A study of the sensitivity to the proton parton distributions of the inclusive photon production cross section in $pp$ collisions at 7 TeV measured by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC

The sensitivity of the inclusive photon production cross section, measured by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in $pp$ collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, to the parton distribution functions within the proton is investigated. Comparisons to the data of next-to-leading order QCD calculations MCFM and JetPhox with different PDFs are presented. The theoretical uncertainties, including scale, strong coupling, and PDF uncertainties are evaluated. The compatibility between data and theory is assessed by $\chi^2$ evaluation, taking into account the correlations between systematic uncertainties.