Classical gluon radiation in ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions

Apr, 1997
15 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.C 56 (1997) 1084-1094
e-Print:
Report number:
  • CU-TP-824,
  • DU-TH-141

Citations per year

19972004201120182025024681012
Abstract:
The classical Yang-Mills equations are solved perturbatively in covariant gauge for a collision of two ultrarelativistic nuclei. The nuclei are taken as ensembles of classical color charges on eikonal trajectories. The classical gluon field is computed in coordinate space up to cubic order in the coupling constant g. We construct the Feynman diagrams corresponding to this field and show the equivalence of the classical and diagrammatic approaches. An argument is given which demonstrates that at higher orders in g the classical description of the process breaks down. As an application, we calculate the energy, number, and multiplicity distributions of produced soft gluons and reproduce earlier results by Gunion and Bertsch and by Kovner, McLerran, and Weigert.
Note:
  • 15 pages, REVTeX, 3 figures Report-no: CU-TP-824; DU-TH-141
  • scattering: heavy ion
  • field equations: Yang-Mills
  • field equations: solution
  • perturbation theory
  • transformation: gauge
  • color
  • approximation: eikonal
  • gluon: field theory
  • field theory: classical
  • gluon: emission