Measurement of direct photon production in p+p collisions at sqrt[s] = 200 GeV

• Published in: Physical review letters 2007-01, Vol.98 (1), p.012002-012002
• Main Authors: Adler, S S, Afanasiev, S, Aidala, C, Ajitanand, N N, Akiba, Y, Al-Jamel, A, Alexander, J, Aoki, K, Aphecetche, L, Armendariz, R, Aronson, S H, Averbeck, R, Awes, T C, Babintsev, V, Baldisseri, A, Barish, K N, Barnes, P D, Bassalleck, B, Bathe, S, Batsouli, S, Baublis, V, Bauer, F, Bazilevsky, A, Belikov, S, Bjorndal, M T, Boissevain, J G, Borel, H, Brooks, M L, Brown, D S, Bruner, N, Bucher, D, Buesching, H, Bumazhnov, V, Bunce, G, Burward-Hoy, J M, Butsyk, S, Camard, X, Chand, P, Chang, W C, Chernichenko, S, Chi, C Y, Chiba, J, Chiu, M, Choi, I J, Choudhury, R K, Chujo, T, Cianciolo, V, Cobigo, Y, Cole, B A, Comets, M P, Constantin, P, Csanád, M, Csörgo, T, Cussonneau, J P, d'Enterria, D, Das, K, David, G, Deák, F, Delagrange, H, Denisov, A, Deshpande, A, Desmond, E J, Devismes, A, Dietzsch, O, Drachenberg, J L, Drapier, O, Drees, A, Durum, A, Dutta, D, Dzhordzhadze, V, Efremenko, Y V, En'yo, H, Espagnon, B, Esumi, S, Fields, D E, Finck, C, Fleuret, F, Fokin, S L, Fox, B D, Fraenkel, Z, Frantz, J E, Franz, A, Frawley, A D, Fukao, Y, Fung, S-Y, Gadrat, S, Germain, M, Glenn, A, Gonin, M, Gosset, J, Goto, Y, Granier de Cassagnac, R, Grau, N, Greene, S V, Perdekamp, M Grosse, Gustafsson, H-A, Hachiya, T, Haggerty, J S, Hamagaki, H, Hansen, A G
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS; CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; CROSS SECTIONS; HEAVY IONS; High Energy Physics - Experiment; PHOTONS; Physics; PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS; PRODUCTION; QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS
• ISSN: 0031-9007; 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.012002

Cross sections for midrapidity production of direct photons in p+p collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are reported for transverse momenta of 3 < pT < 16 GeV/c. Next-to-leading order perturbative QCD (pQCD) describes the data well for pT >5 GeV/c, where the uncertainties of the measurement and theory are comparable. We also report on the effect of requiring the photons to be isolated from parton jet energy. The observed fraction of isolated photons is well described by pQCD for pT >7 GeV/c.