Leading soft gluon production in high energy nuclear collisions

TL;DR

This paper explains the leading soft gluon production in high energy nuclear collisions using conventional QCD perturbation theory, connecting it to DGLAP evolution and classical Yang-Mills solutions.

Contribution

It clarifies the relation between classical Yang-Mills results and standard QCD perturbation theory, highlighting the role of DGLAP logarithms in soft gluon production.

Findings

The classical Yang-Mills result can be derived from QCD perturbation theory.

The key logarithm in the result corresponds to DGLAP evolution logarithm.

The approach bridges classical field calculations with standard perturbative QCD.

Abstract

The leading soft gluon p_T distribution in heavy ion collisions was obtained by Kovner, McLerran, and Weigert after solving classical Yang-Mills equations. I show explicitly this result can be understood in terms of conventional QCD perturbation theory. I also demonstrate that the key logarithm in their result represents the logarithm in DGLAP evolution equations.