The gluon field of a fast moving nucleus and the effective langrangian for QCD at high energy

Abstract

Starting from the effective lagrangian for QCD at high energy we calculate the lowest perturbative contributions to the potential of a relativistic nucleus and compare our results to those derived by Kovchegov (see Y.V. Kovchegov, Phys. Rev. {\bf D55}, 5445 (1997)). The results differ already at order g^3 which can be traced to the fact that the meaning of the underlying gluon fields is different. (The effective gluon field we use is a gauge invariant object.) Both approaches should therefore be seen as alternatives, the relative merits of which have to be judged by their phenomenological success.

Comments: 13 pages, 4 figures. v2: eq. 18 corrected, modified discussion of the relation between the standard and the effective lagrangian approach