Limiting fragmentation from scale-invariant merging of fast partons

Abstract

Exploiting the idea that the fast partons of an energetic projectile can be treated as sources of color radiation interpreted as wee partons, it is shown that the recently observed property of extended limiting fragmentation implies a scaling law for the rapidity distribution of fast partons. This leads to a picture of a self-similar process where, for fixed total rapidity Y, the sources merge with probability varying as 1/y.

Comments: 10 pages, 1 figure (2 eps files). Final version, also updated w.r.t. the published version in Phys. Lett. B665/1 (2008) pp. 35-38