Constraining double parton correlations and interferences

Abstract: Double parton scattering (DPS) has become very relevant as a background to interesting analyses performed by the experiments at the LHC. It encodes knowledge of correlations between the proton constituents not accessible in single parton scattering. Within perturbative QCD DPS is described in terms of partonic subprocesses and double parton distributions (DPDs). There exists a large number of different DPDs describing the different possible states of two partons inside a proton. They include correlations between the two partons and interferences between the two hard subprocesses. Taking the probability interpretation of the DPDs as starting point, we derive limits on the interference DPDs and thereby constrain the size of correlations between two partons inside an unpolarized proton.