The high density effects in heavy-quark production at pA colliders

In this Letter we investigate the role of the high density effects in the heavy-quark production cross section in pA processes at RHIC and LHC. We use, as initial condition, a gluon distribution consistent with fixed target nuclear data and the Glauber–Mueller approach to describe the high density effects. We show that this process can be used as a probe of the presence of the high density effects. Moreover, we include these effects in the calculation of the heavy-quark production in AA collisions, verifying that they cannot be disregarded both in the estimates of quarkonium suppression and in the initial conditions of the quark–gluon plasma.