  In this paper, we study the spatial correlations among quarks and antiquarks
produced at mid-rapidity by gluon pair production in the color glass condensate
framework. This paper is the first part of a series in which we calculate a
complete set of quark/quark, quark/antiquark, and antiquark/antiquark spatial
correlation functions in heavy-light ion collisions, with the goal of
incorporating their conserved charges into the initial conditions of
hydrodynamics. The physical mechanisms captured in this calculation include
geometric, entanglement, and interaction-mediated correlations. In this first
paper, we construct the building blocks for the correlations arising from
single- and double-pair production, studying in detail the single-pair case and
the general features of the double-pair case. We find a rich correlation
structure in transverse coordinate space, with different mechanisms dominating
over different length scales, and we present explicit results for the
quark-antiquark correlations in the single-pair production regime. We reserve a
detailed discussion of the double-pair production regime for the next paper in
this sequence.
