Enhanced Minijet Production in $A-A$ Collisions from Gluons with Large Transverse Momenta

Abstract

We find supersaturation for the intrinsic gluon distribution of nuclei, i.e. the low $x$ unintegrated nuclear gluon distribution peaks at intermediate transverse momenta $k_t=Q_s$ and vanishes at zero $k_t$. Taking into account the intrinsic transverse momenta of the gluons and the saturation scale $p_s$ of the produced gluons, we calculate the minijet cross section arising from gluon gluon scattering for RHIC energies. For central collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200GeV$ the saturation scale $p_s\approx 1.4$ GeV is larger due to intrinsic $k_t$ effects and increases with energy. Our theoretical results on charged particle multiplicity agree very well with the recent experimental data from RHIC.

Comments: revised version, small changes for publication