High energy pA collisions in the color glass condensate approach II: quark pair production Original Research Article

We compute the production of quark–antiquark pairs in high energy collisions between a small and a large projectile, as in proton–nucleus collisions, in the framework of the color glass condensate. We derive a general expression for quark pair-production, which is not k⊥-factorizable. However, k⊥-factorization is recovered in the limit of large mass pairs or large quark–antiquark momenta. Our results are amenable to a simple interpretation and suggest how multi-parton correlations at small x can be quantified in high-energy proton/deuteron–nucleus collisions.