Classical methods in DIS and nuclear scattering at small x

TL;DR

This paper discusses the application of classical weak coupling methods to study saturation phenomena in hadrons and nuclei at small x, focusing on structure functions in DIS and gluon energy density in nuclear collisions.

Contribution

It introduces the use of classical weak coupling techniques to analyze non-linear QCD fields at small x, providing new computational approaches for structure functions and gluon energy density.

Findings

Classical methods effectively describe saturation effects at small x.

Computed structure functions in DIS using classical field techniques.

Estimated gluon energy density in high energy nuclear collisions.

Abstract

In hadrons and nuclei at very small x, parton distributions saturate at a scale Q_s(x). Since the occupation number is large, and $Q_s(x)>>\Lambda_{QCD}$, classical weak coupling methods may be used to study this novel regime of non-linear classical fields in QCD. In these lectures, we apply these methods to compute structure functions in deeply inelastic scattering (DIS) and the energy density of gluons produced in high energy nuclear collisions.