The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has measured the differential cross section of $\varphi (1020)$-meson production at forward rapidity in $p+p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=510\mathrm{GeV}$ via the dimuon decay channel. The partial cross section in the rapidity and $p_T$ ranges $1.2<|y|<2.2$ and $2<p_T<7\mathrm{GeV}/c$ is ${\sigma }_{\varphi }=[2.28\pm 0.09(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.14(\mathrm{syst})\pm 0.27(\mathrm{norm})]\times {10}^{-2}\mathrm{mb}$. The energy dependence of ${\sigma }_{\varphi }$ ($1.2<|y|<2.2,2<p_T<5\mathrm{GeV}/c$) is studied using the PHENIX measurements at $\sqrt{s}=200$ and 510 GeV and the Large Hadron Collider measurements at $\sqrt{s}=2.76$ and 7 TeV. The experimental results are compared to various event generator predictions (pythia6, pythia8, phojet, ampt, epos3, and epos-lhc).

• Received 6 October 2017
• Corrected 16 November 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.092006

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Published by the American Physical Society