Measurement of the inclusive isolated photon production cross section in $$\text{ p }\text{ p }$$ collisions at $$\sqrt{s}=7$$ TeV

Abstract

Abstract The production cross section of inclusive isolated photons has been measured by the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC in pp collisions at a centre-of-momentum energy of $$\sqrt{s}=$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msqrt><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:msqrt><mml:mo>=</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math> 7 TeV. The measurement is performed with the electromagnetic calorimeter EMCal and the central tracking detectors, covering a range of $$|\eta |&lt;0.27$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mo>|</mml:mo><mml:mi>η</mml:mi><mml:mo>|</mml:mo><mml:mo>&lt;</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.27</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math> in pseudorapidity and a transverse momentum range of $$ 10&lt; p_\mathrm {T}^{\gamma }&lt; 60~\mathrm {GeV}/c$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>10</mml:mn><mml:mo>&lt;</mml:mo><mml:msubsup><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mi>T</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mi>γ</mml:mi></mml:msubsup><mml:mo>&lt;</mml:mo><mml:mn>60</mml:mn><mml:mspace/><mml:mi>GeV</mml:mi><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mi>c</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math> . The result extends the $$p_\mathrm {T}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msub><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mi>T</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math> coverage of previously published results of the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the same collision energy to smaller $$p_\mathrm {T}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msub><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mi>T</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math> . The measurement is compared to next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations and to the results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments. All measurements and theory predictions are in agreement with each other.