# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Minijet physics is one of the most promising applications of perturbative QCD to the analysis of processes with multiparticle production. The minijet approach is based on the fact that some portion of transverse energy is produced in the semihard form, i.e. is perturbatively calculable because of the relatively large transverse momenta involved in the scattering but is not observed in the form of customary hard jets well separated from the soft background. A notable feature of this approach is a predicted rapid growth of the integrated perturbative cross section of parton-parton scattering, responsible for perturbative transverse energy production, with energy, and at RHIC (200 GeV/A in CMS) and especially LHC (5500 GeV/A) energies the perturbative cross section becomes quite large and in fact even exceeds the inelastic and total cross sections for large enough rapidity intervals. The crossover from the regime described by conventional leading twist QCD and the one where multiple hard interactions are important is one of the most important problems of the minijet approach . The field is actively developing, recent reviews on the subject containing a large number of references are e.g.  and .

A special importance of minijet physics for ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is due to the fact that minijets with large enough transverse momenta are produced at a very early stage of the collision thus forming an initial parton system that can further evolve kinetically or even hydrodynamically, so that the minijet physics describes the initial conditions for subsequent collective evolution of parton matter , , , , see also a recent review .

Among the recent developments let us mention a new approach to minijet production based on the quasiclassical treatment of nuclear gluon distributions, , , , ,  and a description based on the parton cascade approach .

The perspective of having a perturbatively controllable description of a substantial part of the inelastic cross section is certainly very exciting <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1The mechanism responsible for the growth of the inelastic cross section as such can be soft, see  and the recent analysis . However, to determine the accuracy of the predictions given by minijet physics, the existing calculations have to be expanded in several directions.

In this paper we discuss a conceptually simplest extension of the leading order (LO) calculation of the transverse energy spectrum produced in heavy ion collisions presented in ,  and  by including the next-to-leading order (NLO) contributions to this cross section. The NLO corrections to conventional high $`p_{}`$ jet production cross section were computed in ,  and  for Tevatron energies. Later the code of  was used for calculating this cross section for RHIC and LHC energies in . The necessity of doing this computation in the minijet region was, of course, clearly understood and emphasized in the literature on minijet physics , . A clear goal here is to establish an accuracy of the LO prediction by explicitly computing the NLO corrections to it.

The outline of the paper is as follows.

In the second section we describe a calculation of the next-to-leading order (NLO) cross section of transverse energy production in proton-proton collisions using the Monte Carlo code developed by Z. Kunzst and D. Soper  and study a deviation from the LO result.

In the third section the computed NLO cross section is used in the calculation of transverse energy production in heavy ion collisions, where the nuclear collision is described as a superposition of the nucleon-nucleon ones in a Glauber geometrical approach of . We show that NLO corrections lead to a substantial broadening of the transverse energy spectrum.

In the last section we discuss the results and formulate the conclusions.

## 2 NLO minijet transverse energy production in hadron collisions

The basic difference of minijet physics from that of the usual high-$`p_t`$ jets is that the minijets can not be observed as jets as such. Experimentally they manifest themselves in more inclusive quantities such as the energy flow into a given rapidity window. The NLO calculation of a jet cross section contains a so-called jet defining algorithm specifying the resolution for the jet to be observed, e.g. the angular size of the jet-defining cone, see e.g. . As a minijet can not be observed as an energy flow into a cone separated from the rest of the particles produced in the collision, some of the restrictions employed in the standard definition of a jet should be relaxed. A natural idea is to define a minijet produced ”jet” as a transverse energy deposited in some (central) rapidity window and a full azimuth. This corresponds to a standard detector setup for studying central rapidity region in nuclear collisions at RHIC and LHC.

The inclusive cross section is obtained by integrating the differential one over the phase space on the surface corresponding to the variable in question. Schematically the NLO distribution of the transverse energy produced into a given rapidity interval $`y_a<y<y_b`$ is equal to

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma }{dE_{}}}={\displaystyle D^2PS\frac{d\sigma }{d^4p_1d^4p_2}\delta (E_{}\underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}|p_i|\theta (y_{min}<y_i<y_{max}))}`$   
$`+{\displaystyle D^3PS\frac{d\sigma }{d^4p_1d^4p_2d^4p_3}\delta (E_{}\underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}|p_i|\theta (y_{min}<y_i<y_{max}))}`$ (1)   
where the first contribution corresponds to the two-particle final state and the second contribution to the three-particle one. The two-particle contribution has to be computed with one-loop corrections taken into account.

As in all NLO calculations the separation between the real emission and virtual exchange requires regularization, in addition to the usual ultraviolet renormalization, of the infrared and collinear divergences. Physically this means that a distinction between a two-particle and three-particle final state becomes purely conventional.

In perturbative QCD one can meaningfully compute only infrared stable quantities , in which the divergences originating from real and virtual gluon emission cancel each other, so that adding very soft gluons does not change the answer. It is easy to convince oneself, that the transverse energy distribution into a given rapidity interval Eq. (1) satisfies the above requirement.

In more physical terms the main difference between the LO and NLO calculations is that unlike the LO case the number of produced (mini)jets is no longer an infrared-stable quantity in the NLO computation, i.e. it can not be predicted. For example, we can no longer calculate a probability of hitting the acceptance window by a given number of minijets, which is one of the important issues in an event-by-event analysis of the initially produced gluon system (for details see ). In view of the applications of the NLO results for nucleon-nucleon collisions to the nuclear ones this means in turn that the elementary block in the geometric approach is no longer describing the production of a fixed number of jets (2 jets in the LO case), but the production of transverse energy into a kinematical domain specified by the jet defining algorithm.

The calculation of transverse energy spectrum was performed using the Monte-Carlo code developed by Kunzst and Soper , with a jet definition appropriate for transverse energy production specified in Eq. (1). The results for the cross section of transverse energy production into a central rapidity window $`0.5y0.5`$ are presented in Fig. 1 for RHIC energy ($`\sqrt{s}=200`$ GeV) and Fig. 2 for the LHC one ($`\sqrt{s}=5500`$ GeV), where for LHC we have chosen the energy of proton - proton collisions available for protons in the lead nuclei in PbPb collisions.

The calculaions were performed using the MRSG(-) structure functions . The parameters for the fits for the spectra having the functional form $`aE_{}^\alpha `$ are given in Table 1.

| $`\sqrt{S}`$, GeV | LO/NLO | $`\alpha `$ | $`a`$, mb/GeV | $`\sigma (E_0)`$, mb | | $`\sigma _{in}`$, mb | $`E_0^{}`$, GeV |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 5500 | LO | 4.14 | $`3.710^3`$ | 15. | 3 | 66.3 | 2.5 |
| 5500 | LO+NLO | 4.24 | $`7.810^3`$ | 26. | 9 | 66.3 | 3.0 |
| 200 | LO | 4.91 | $`2.710^2`$ | 0. | 31 | 41.8 | 1.1 |
| 200 | LO+NLO | 4.92 | $`5.010^2`$ | 0. | 55 | 41.8 | 1.3 |

Table 1

We see that taking into account the NLO corrections to transverse energy production can roughly be described by introducing effective $`K`$-factors $`K_{RHIC}1.9`$ and $`K_{LHC}2.1`$. This agrees well with the ”expected” $`K`$-factor used in earlier publications , . Let us note, that while at RHIC energies the slopes of the LO and NLO curves are practically the same, at LHC energies the NLO slope is about 2 percent larger than the LO one.

In the third column we give the values of the integrated minijet production cross section

$$\sigma (E_0)=_{E_0}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑E_{}\frac{d\sigma }{dE_{}}$$
(2)   
for the cutoff value $`E_0=4`$ GeV. The range of validity of a leading twist approximation for transverse energy production in any given rapidity window is determined by the inequality

$$\sigma (E_0)=_{E_0}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑E_{}\frac{d\sigma }{dE_{}}\sigma _{inel}$$
(3)   
The equality in the above formula fixes the limiting value of the cutoff $`E_0^{}`$. The values of the inelastic cross section are shown in the fourth column of Table 1<sup>2</sup><sup>2</sup>2The inelastic cross section is computed using the parameterization $`\sigma _{inel}(s)=\sigma _0(s/s_0)^{0.0845}(0.960.03\mathrm{log}(s/s_0))`$, where $`s_0=1`$ GeV, $`\sigma _0=21.4`$ mb, which gives a good description of the existing experimental data  and the limiting cutoff values $`E_0^{}`$ are shown in the fifth one. We see that the limiting values $`E_0^{}`$ are quite small. Let us stress hat the values of $`E_0^{}`$ depend rather strongly on the rapidity window under consideration. The limiting cutoff values shown in Table 1 refer to the central unit rapidity interval and thus present a lower bound with respect to those corresponding to larger rapidity intervals.

Let us also note that, as mentioned before, we had to fix a scale for the NLO logarithmic corrections, which for the above calculations was chosen to be $`\mu =E_{}`$. We have checked that variations of this scale in the range $`0.5E_{}\mu 1.5E_{}`$ does not produce significant variations of the result, so that the NLO calculation is stable and thus produces a reliable prediction for the difference between the LO and NLO cases.

## 3 NLO transverse energy production in nuclear collisions

In this section we turn to an estimate of the transverse energy production in nuclear collisions in the Glauber type approach, in which they are considered to be an impact parameter averaged superposition of hadron-hadron collisions. We shall follow the geometrical approach similar to that of  and consider the gaussian approximation to the transverse energy distribution at given impact parameter in the collision of two nuclei with atomic numbers $`A`$ and $`B`$

$$\frac{d\omega _{AB}}{dE_{}}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi D_{AB}}}\mathrm{exp}(\frac{(E_{}E_{}_{AB}(b))^2}{2D_{AB}(b)}),$$
(4)   
where $`E_{}_{AB}(b)`$ is a mean transverse energy produced at given impact parameter $`b`$ :

$$E_{}_{AB}(b)=ABP_{AB}(b)E_{}_{pp}(b),$$
(5)   
$`D_{AB}`$ is a dispersion of the $`E_{}`$ distribution given by

$$D_{AB}(b)=ABP_{AB}(b)(E_{}^2_{pp}P_{AB}(b)E_{}_{pp}^2),$$
(6)   
and $`P_{AB}`$ is a probability of nuclear scattering at given impact parameter where the normalization is fixed by the inelastic cross section for minijet production in $`pp`$ collisions Eq. (2). Let us note that the Glauber model we use is similar to that of  in that the transverse energy distribution at a given value of the impact parameter is approximated with the Gaussian, see Eq. (4), but differs from it in using the Bernoulli process instead of Poissoninan one in  and the different overall normalization at the integrated minijet production cross section in the rapidity window under consideration. The final expression for the cross section of transverse energy production in nuclear collisions is obtained from Eq. (4) by integrating over the impact parameter

$$\frac{d\sigma }{dE_{}}=d^2b\frac{d\omega _{AB}}{dE_{}}$$
(7)   
The resulting transverse energy distributions are plotted in Fig. 3

and Fig. 4

for PbPb collisions for RHIC and LHC energies correspondingly. We see that the main effect of taking into account the NLO corrections is a considerable broadening of the shoulder of the distribution which basically follows form the increase in the magnitude of the transverse energy production cross section from LO to NLO. At the same time the height of transverse energy distribution basically does not change. The above results show that to this order in perturbative QCD computation the NLO prediction is an increased event-by-event produced transverse energy providing more favorable conditions for collective behavior of the produced gluon system, its thermalization, etc. as compared to the leading order calculations.

## 4 Discussion

The results of the above-presented calculation of the next-to-leading order corrections to the transverse energy flow into a unit rapidity interval in the central region show that the NLO corrections to the Born calculation of the transverse energy distribution in pp collisions based on the lowest order $`22`$ scattering are substantial, so that the effective K-factors are $`K_{RHIC}1.9`$ and $`K_{LHC}2.1`$, in accordance with the ”expected” ones previously used in the literature , .

The cross section of transverse energy production in pp collisions serves as a basic building block in the geometrical Glauber model of nuclear collisions. Switching from LO to NLO cross section of $`E_{}`$ production results in a substantial broadening of the minijet transverse energy distribution in nuclear collision providing more favorable conditions for subsequent collective effects characteristic for dense parton systems such as quark-gluon plasma to manifest themselves. Let us note, that the form of this distribution does not change a lot.

The effective K-factors being substantial (although not overwhelmingly large) certainly make it necessary to develop a more accurate treatment of minijet production. To achieve this goal one has to solve two interrelated problems. Both are linked to the large value of the integrated minijet transverse energy production cross section in the leading twist approximation discussed in the second section and the resulting conflict with unitarity at low minijet transverse energies at LHC, at least when considering large enough rapidity windows.

First of all, one has to get a reliable estimate of the higher order corrections to the hard blob responsible for $`E_{}`$ production. Most probably it will require resumming the perturbative contributions to all orders, because even if the hypothetical next-to-next-to leading order calculation reduces the K-factor, the arising large cancellations would require further improvement of the accuracy of the calculation, etc. Such resummation program has been successfully performed in the case of jet pair production at the kinematical threshold . Unfortunately at present it is not clear how to extend this program to the minijet production kinematics.

The second problem is even more difficult and is related to the necessity of a reliable computation of the nonlinear contributions to (mini)jet production which are quite important at high energies both in hadron and nuclear collisions  and photoproduction . The current approach to describing nonlinear effects is based on the ad hoc eikonal unitarization scheme, see e.g. . This scheme does not take into account the processes in which several nucleons are involved in transverse energy production. This problem was recently reanalyzed in  for pA collisions showing in particular an interesting connection between the nonlinear effects in the structure functions and those in the spectrum of emitted gluons. An advanced analysis of the nonlinear effects at the example of nuclear effects in jet photoproduction  has revealed a number of interesting features possibly relevant also for the computation of nonlinear effects in hadroproduction of jets. One of the most striking aspects of this treatment is that although diagrammatically the nonlinear effects initially look as a superposition of the leading twist contributions, the final result appears to be a next-to-leading twist one due to a delicate cancellation between various diagrams , .

Various theoretical schemes possibly responsible for taming the growth of the minijet production cross sections were discussed. One of them is based on accounting for nonlinear effects in quasiclassical approach, , . Here at tree level the nonperturbative lattice calculations of minijet production in nuclear collisions were performed in . A more traditional treatment based on accounting for nonlinear effects in QCD evolution equations is described in the review .

Another related problem is a necessity of switching from the collinear to high energy factorization in describing the minijet production at high energies, see e.g., .

In summary, the computed NLO corrections to the minijet transverse energy production in hadron and nuclear collisions turned out to be substantial both for RHIC and LHC energies. Qualitatively this enhances the energy production in the central region and significantly broadens the transverse energy spectrum in nuclear collisions. However much work is still ahead in order to improve the accuracy of these predictions.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to D. Soper, L. McLerran, K. Kajantie, Z. Kunzst, K. Eskola, I.M Dremin, I.V. Andreev and S.G. Matinyan for useful and insightful discussions.

Special thanks are to Davison Soper for discussion that initiated the above work and providing the NLO code and Kari Eskola for reading the manuscript and useful comments.

A.L. is grateful for hospitality and support at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Minnesota, where this work had been started, at CERN Theory Division, where the major part of this work was done, and at Service de Physique Theorique de Saclay, where it was finalized.

This work was also partially supported by Russian Fund for Basic Research, Grant 96-02-16210.