Gg. Barnafoldi et al., Jets and produced particles in pp collisions from SPS to RHIC energies fornuclear applications, J PHYS G-NU, 27(8), 2001, pp. 1767-1774
Higher-order perturbative QCD corrections play an important role in the rep
roduction of data at high transverse momenta in the energy range 20 GeV les
s than or equal to roots less than or equal to 200 GeV. Recent calculations
of photon and pion production in pp collisions yield detailed information
on the next-to-leading-order (NLO) contributions. However, the application
of these results in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions is not st
raightforward. The study of nuclear effects requires a simplified understan
ding of the output of these computations. Here we summarize our analysis of
recent calculations, aimed at handling the NLO results by introducing proc
ess and energy-dependent K factors.