Final-State Interaction as the Origin of the Cronin Effect

Abstract

Instead of adhering to the usual explanation of the Cronin effect in terms of the broadening of the parton transverse momentum in the initial state, we show that the enhancement of hadron production at moderate $p_T$ in d+Au collisions is due to the recombination of soft and shower partons in the final state. Such a mechanism can readily explain the decrease of the Cronin effect with increasing rapidity. Furthermore, the effect should be larger for protons than for pions.

Comments: 4 RevTeX pages including 3 figures and 1 table; Some notational changes and a corrected reference