Initial energy density of gluons produced in very-high-energy nuclear collisions

A Krasnitz; R Venugopalan

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.4309

Initial energy density of gluons produced in very-high-energy nuclear collisions

Phys Rev Lett. 2000 May 8;84(19):4309-12. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.4309.

Authors

A Krasnitz¹, R Venugopalan

Affiliation

¹ UCEH, Universidade do Algarve, Campus de Gambelas, P-8000 Faro, Portugal.

PMID: 10990673
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.4309

Abstract

In very-high-energy nuclear collisions, the initial energy of produced gluons per unit area per unit rapidity, (dE/L2)/deta, is equal to f(g(2)&mgr;L) (g(2)&mgr;)(3)/g(2), where &mgr;(2) is proportional to the gluon density per unit area of the colliding nuclei. For an SU(2) gauge theory, a nonperturbative computation of f(g(2)&mgr;L) shows that it varies rapidly for small g(2)&mgr;L but varies only by approximately 25%, from 0.208+/-0.004 to 0.257+/-0. 005, for a wide range 35.36- 296.98 in g(2)&mgr;L. This includes the range relevant for collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Extrapolating to SU(3), we estimate dE/deta for Au-Au collisions in the central region at RHIC and LHC.