Midrapidity neutral-pion production in proton-proton collisions at square root s = 200 GeV

Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Dec 12;91(24):241803. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.241803. Epub 2003 Dec 11.

Abstract

The invariant differential cross section for inclusive neutral-pion production in p+p collisions at sqrt[s]=200 GeV has been measured at midrapidity (|eta|<0.35) over the range 1<p(T) less, similar 14 GeV/c by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Predictions of next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations are consistent with these measurements. The precision of our result is sufficient to differentiate between prevailing gluon-to-pion fragmentation functions.