2002/12/31 by L. Frankfurt, M. Strikman · 14 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Fragmentation (computing) #Gluon #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Implosion #Large Hadron Collider #Nuclear physics #Nucleon #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Parton #Physics #Plasma #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quark #Quark–gluon plasma #hep-ph #nucl-ex #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.91.022301
published in Physical Review Letters 91(2), 022301 (American Physical Society) · 5 pages, final version, discussion of the signals of the new phase is expanded
arxiv created 2003/07/08 · openalex publication_date 2003/07/08 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate nuclear fragmentation in the central proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the energies of CERN LHC. Within the semiclassical approximation we argue that because of the fast increase with energy of the cross sections of soft and hard interactions each nucleon is stripped in the average process off "soft" partons and fragments into a collection of leading quarks and gluons with large p(t). Valence quarks and gluons are streaming in the opposite directions when viewed in the c.m. of the produced system. The resulting pattern of the fragmentation of the colliding nuclei leads to an implosion of the quark and gluon constituents of the nuclei. The nonequilibrium state produced at the initial stage in the nucleus fragmentation region is estimated to have densities >/=50 GeV/fm(3) at the LHC energies and probably >/=10 GeV/fm(3) at BNL RHIC.