The initial energy density of gluons produced in very high energy nuclear collisions

A. Krasnitz; R. Venugopalan

Paper

The initial energy density of gluons produced in very high energy nuclear collisions

Abstract

In very high energy nuclear collisions, the initial energy of produced gluons per unit area per unit rapidity,

, is equal to

, where

is proportional to the gluon density per unit area of the colliding nuclei. For an SU(2) gauge theory, we perform a non--perturbative numerical computation of the function

. It decreases rapidly for small

but varies only by

%, from

, for a wide range 35.36--296.98 in

, including the range relevant for collisions at RHIC and LHC. Extrapolating to SU(3), we estimate the initial energy per unit rapidity for Au-Au collisions in the central region at RHIC and LHC.