Double Parton Scattering in Proton-Nucleus Collisions

Topic of my thesis is the joint study of Double Parton Scattering (DPS) in high energy proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions in order to understand how the partons inside a proton are correlated among each other. The multi-parton structure is in fact probed in a different way by DPS, in p -p and in p -A collisions. In p-A collisions the interpretation of the experimental results may be however complicated by the presence of interference terms, which are missing in p-p. A suitable reaction channel, where interference terms are absent, is W JJ production. By studying W JJ production in p-Pb collisions, we estimate that the fraction of events due to DPS may be larger by a factor 3 or 4, as compared to p-p, while the amount of the increased fraction can give information on the importance of different correlation terms.