Abstract
The nuclear wave-function is dominated at low- and medium-x by gluons. As the rapid growth of the gluon distribution towards low x, as derived from current theoretical estimates, would violate unitarity, there must be a mechanism that tames this explosive growth. This is most efficiently studied in colliders running in e+A mode, as the nucleus is an efficient amplifier of saturation effects occurring with high gluon densities. In fact, large A can lead to these effects manifesting themselves at energies a few orders of magnitude lower than in e+p collisions. In order to study these effects, there are proposals to build an e+A machine in the USA, operating over a large range of masses and energies. These studies will allow for an in-depth comparison to A+A collisions where results have given tantalising hints of a new state of matter with partonic degrees of freedom. In order to explain these results quantitatively, the gluons and their interactions must be understood fully as they are the dominant source of hard probes at both RHIC and LHC energies.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
F.-P. Schilling, Acta Phys. Pol. B 33, 3419 (2002), hep-ex/0209001
A. Schoening, DIS2008, for example
K.J. Eskola, H. Paukkunen, C.A. Salgado, arXiv:0802.0139 [hep-ph] (2008)
I. Arsene (BRAHMS Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 242302 (2004)
Data available on the Durham server: http://durpdg.dur.ac.uk/hepdata/pdf.html
Frontiers of Nuclear Science, A Long Range Plan December 2007, available at http://www.sc.doe.gov/np/nsac/docs/Nuclear-Science.High-Res.pdf
V.N. Gribov, L.N. Lipatov, Sov. J. Nucl. Phys. 15, 438 (1972)
G. Altarelli, G. Parisi, Nucl. Phys. B 126, 298 (1977)
Y.L. Dokshitzer, Sov. Phys. JETP 46, 641 (1977)
E.A. Kuraev, L.N. Lipatov, V.S. Fadin, Sov. Phys. JETP 45, 199 (1977)
I.I. Balitsky, L.N. Lipatov, Sov. J. Nucl. Phys. 28, 822 (1978)
E. Iancu, R. Venugopalan, Review for QGP3, ed. by R.C. Hwa, X.-N. Wang (World Scientific, 2003). arXiv:hep-ph/0303204
J. Jalilian-Marian , Phys. Rev. D 59, 014014 (1999)
H. Kowalski, T. Lappi, R. Venugopalan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 022303 (2008)
S. Munier, A.M. Stasto, A.H. Mueller, Nucl. Phys. B 603, 427 (2001)
T. Rogers, V. Guzey, M. Strikman, X. Zu, Phys. Rev. D 69, 074011 (2004)
C. Adler (STAR Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 202301 (2002)
A. Airapetian (HERMES Collaboration) Phys. Lett. B 577, 37 (2003)
A. Accardi, Eur. Phys. J. C 49, 347 (2007)
B. Abelev (STAR Collaboration), Phys. Rev. C 77, 34910 (2008)
J. Adams (STAR Collaboration), Nucl. Phys. A 757, 102 (2005)
R. Thomas, B. Kampfer, G. Soff, Acta Phys. Hung. A 22, 83 (2005)
I. Abt, A. Caldwell, X. Liu, J. Sutiak, hep-ex/0407053
J. Pasukonis, B. Surrow, physics/0608290
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0 ), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.