Nuclear effects in prompt photon production at the Large Hadron Collider Original Research Article

We present a detailed study of prompt photon production cross section in heavy-ion collisions in the central rapidity region at energy of View the MathML source TeV, appropriate to LHC experiment. We include the next-to-leading order radiative corrections, O(αemαs2), nuclear shadowing and the parton energy-loss effects. We find that the nuclear effects can reduce the invariant cross section for prompt photon production by an order of magnitude at pt=3 GeV. We discuss theoretical uncertainties due to parton energy loss and nuclear shadowing parameters. We show that the K-factor, which signifies the importance of next-to-leading order corrections, is large and has a strong pt dependence.