We revisit the “hybrid formalism” for particle production used recently to study saturation effects in single hadron multiplicities at forward rapidities at RHIC and LHC. We point out that at leading twist there is an extra contribution to the formulae used so far, which corresponds to particle production via inelastic scattering of the projectile partons on the target fields. This contribution is expected to be small due to kinematics at very forward rapidities/very high transverse momenta, but should be significant at high momenta and very high energies. This contribution is expected to be most affected by saturation effects, and is therefore an interesting object of study in the context of possible onset of saturation at high energies.

• Received 2 March 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.83.105004