Effective theories for nuclei at high energies

TL;DR

This paper reviews the application of the Color Glass Condensate effective field theory to high-energy nuclear interactions, emphasizing its role in understanding gluon saturation and initial conditions in heavy-ion collisions at colliders.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the CGC framework, its theoretical foundations, recent developments, and phenomenological applications in high-energy nuclear physics.

Findings

CGC effectively describes gluon saturation in heavy-ion collisions.

Recent advancements improve understanding of initial conditions in collisions.

Phenomenological applications align with experimental data.

Abstract

We discuss the application of the Color Glass Condensate (CGC), an effective field theory of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), to describe high-energy nuclear interactions. We first provide an introduction to the methods and language of the CGC, its role in understanding gluon saturation in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC and RHIC, and its relevance in various scattering processes such as Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS). The application of the CGC effective field theory to describe hadron-hadron collisions is discussed in the scope of asymmetric \textit{dilute-dense} collisions, and Heavy-Ion Collisions in the \textit{dense-dense} limit. The review covers theoretical foundations, recent advancements, and phenomenological applications, focusing on using the CGC to determine the initial conditions of heavy-ion collisions.