Gluon saturation in pA collisions at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider: Predictions for hadron multiplicities

The upcoming p+Pb run at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will probe the nuclear gluon distribution at very small Bjorken x (from x∼10^-4 at midrapidity down to x∼10^-6 in the proton fragmentation region) and will allow testing of approaches based on parton saturation. Here, we present the predictions of the Kharzeev-Levin-Nardi model for hadron multiplicities and multiplicity distributions in p+Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 4.4 TeV. We also compare the model to the existing pp, dA, and AA data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and LHC.