Abstract

We investigate direct photon production in pp collisions at the energies of RHIC, CDF and LHC, at different rapidities employing various color-dipole models. The cross section peaks at forward rapidities due to the Abelian dynamics of photon radiation. This opens new opportunities for measurement of direct photons at forward rapidities, where the background from radiative hadronic decays is strongly suppressed. Our model calculations show that photon production is sensitive to the gluon saturation effects, and strongly depends on the value of the anomalous dimension. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.