Hadron yields from thermalized minijets at RHIC and LHC

TL;DR

This paper predicts hadron yields at RHIC and LHC by modeling thermalized minijets, incorporating nuclear shadowing effects, and linking parton energy densities to hadron multiplicities through entropy conservation.

Contribution

It introduces a method to connect pQCD-calculated energy densities with hadron yields using entropy conservation, accounting for nuclear shadowing effects.

Findings

Different shadowing parametrizations lead to significantly different energy densities.

The model predicts specific hadron yields at RHIC and LHC energies.

Nuclear shadowing plays a crucial role in determining initial energy densities.

Abstract

We calculate the yields of pions, kaons, and $\phi$-mesons for RHIC and LHC energies assuming thermodynamical equilibration of the produced minijets, and using as input results from pQCD for the energy densities at midrapidity. In the calculation of the production of partons and of transverse energy one has to account for nuclear shadowing. By using two parametrizations for the gluon shadowing one derives energy densities differing strongly in magnitude. In this publication we link those perturbatively calculated energy densities of partons via entropy conservation in an ideal fluid to the hadron multiplicities at chemical freeze-out.