# Information Theory, Quark Clusters in Nuclei, and Parton Distributions

## 1 Introduction

Information Theory was originally developed by Hartley , Nyquist , and Shannon  in order to establish a mathematical description of telecommunications and to understand how information may be lost upon transmission over noisy channels. Shannon, in particular, developed a complete formalism in which the concept of information is quantified and important theorems regarding its transmission are proven. The fundamental quantity that measures information is information entropy. Shannon has shown that the information entropy is the most suitable function of the probabilities for emission of signals by an ergodic source that measures the magnitude of the receiver’s uncertainty on those signals. In this sense information entropy is a true measure of one’s ignorance of their correct content. The larger the entropy the greater the uncertainty and, consequently, the information content. Therefore, maximizing the information entropy can lead to evaluation of the signal probability distribution under the constraints imposed by the telecommunications problem at hand.

Application of this theory in physics could be versatile. All quantum phenomena, for example, are stochastic in nature and are described in terms of probability amplitudes. Then by appropriately defining the information entropy of the physical system under consideration and maximizing it under constraints imposed by theoretical assumptions or experimental data one can obtain the probability amplitudes that are most consistent with one’s ignorance of the system. This method has been used by Plastino  to evaluate wave functions for various physical systems. It is a very powerful technique since it does not rely on any specific modeling but only on what is actually known about the system to derive best estimates for what is unknown.

In this article we apply Information Theory to improve parton, specifically gluon, distributions in nuclei. These are suitable subjects to the method because they are probabilistic in character. The problem whose solution we wish to improve is that of quarkonium suppression in proton-nucleus collisions at very high energies. The production of charmonium states, most notably of the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ boson as well as of bottomonium ones, especially the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ resonances, has been observed in various experiments involving heavy nuclear targets to be lower that in hydrogen if the latter is multiplied by the mass number of the nucleus. At energies achieved at Fermilab $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ suppression is very pronounced and exhibits a characteristic dependence on the momentum fraction of the target nucleon carried by the struck parton . Many models have been developed to explain this behavior. For the purposes of demonstrating the Information Theory method we consider a model that is based on the assumption that quarks in nuclei have a finite probability to conglomerate forming multi-quark color singlet states, usually called (multi)quark clusters . The parton distributions in such clusters differ from those in single nucleons and generally are concentrated to lower momentum fractions of the partons as the cluster becomes larger. This model supplemented by final state dissociation of the produced quarkonium has successfully described $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression in hadron-nucleus collisions as well as most heavy ion collisions, the latter being the topic of heated debate due to their relevance with Quark-Gluon Plasma production. In this model very simple parton distributions have been used based on very general assumptions. However, the gluon distributions which play a crucial role in quarkonium production are poorly known in nuclei. It turns out that within this model the gluon distributions that solve the problem of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression are inadequate to describe $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ suppression from the same experiment. We shall use Information Theory to improve them in a manner that maintains their applicability to the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ data and, at the same time, to enhance agreement with the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ data.

## 2 Information Theory

Suppose an ergodic source of information, which can be anything from a telegraphic device to a quantum system, produces signals $`x`$ from some available ensemble $`X`$ with probability distribution $`p(x)`$. We define the information entropy of the source as 

$$S=\underset{x}{}p(x,\alpha _i)\mathrm{ln}p(x,\alpha _i),$$
(1)   
where the summation includes all instances of $`x`$ in $`X`$ and can indicate an integral if $`x`$ is a continuous variable and $`\alpha _i`$ are a group of fixed parameters in the function $`p`$. It is required that

$$\underset{x}{}p(x,\alpha _i)=1.$$
(2)   
If the logarithm is binary then $`S`$ is expressed in bits. Considered as a functional of the probability distribution, $`S`$ is maximal when $`p`$ is uniform; we know the most about a system when the signals it produces have no variability. To obtain the optimal function $`p(x,\alpha _i)`$, i.e., to estimate the “best” set of parameters $`\alpha _i`$ we impose the extremization condition

$$\frac{S}{a_i}=0,$$
(3)   
for all $`i`$. To ensure a maximum second order derivatives must be looked at as well. In this work we assume a certain functional form for $`p`$ and simply want to determine its parameters. The procedure can be generalized to include cases in which we do not know the exact form of $`p`$ but there are constraints based on data. The method of Lagrange’s multipliers can be used to evaluate distribution functions when a number of expectation values are known .

## 3 Quarkonium Suppression in p-A Collisions

### 3.1 Facts and models

The observed suppression of the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}`$ production cross section per unit mass number, $`A`$, in high energy hadron-nucleus  and nucleus-nucleus  collisions exhibits a strong nuclear dependence. The hadron-nucleus data also show that the depletion increases with the longitudinal momentum of the quarkonium. These results have generated many theoretical studies. A variety of effects are thought to contribute and numerous models have been suggested. These contributions may be grouped into six major categories: (1) Quarkonium scattering off parton and/or hadron co-movers ; (2) Glauber inelastic scattering on the nucleons ; (3) Shadowing and EMC distortions of the nuclear parton distributions ; (4) Parton scattering before  and after  the hard process; (5) Parton energy loss in the initial and/or the final state  and, (6) Intrinsic charm in nucleons . Color transparency may alter the charmonium Glauber absorption . In the case of heavy ion collisions contribution of an unconfined state (Quark Gluon Plasma) has probably been very small in earlier experiments  but is currently debated due to new data . In our view more than one contribution must be carefully balanced to explain the quarkonium suppression. Here the modifications of the initial state parton distributions (for all values of the Bjorken variable, $`x`$) and the final state inelastic scattering (absorption) are considered.

In this article the term “EMC effect”, named after the European Muon Collaboration, will signify any deviation from unity of the structure function ratio of a bound nucleon to that of a free one at any value of the variable $`x`$, the latter defined as the fraction of the nucleon momentum carried by the interacting parton.

### 3.2 Quark clusters in nuclei

The EMC effect has been studied in the framework of the expansion of a nuclear state $`|A`$ on a complete basis of color singlet states labeled by the number of (3, 6, 9 or more) valence quarks they contain. Such states, also referred to as multi-quark clusters, are formed when nucleons bound in a nucleus overlap sufficiently so that they share their constituent partons. The probabilities for multi-quark cluster formation can be estimated using nuclear wave functions  or can be found by fitting DIS data . The agreement with EMC and NMC  data is excellent down to $`Q^22`$ GeV<sup>2</sup> and the fit strongly constrains the quark momentum distributions in clusters. (Momentum conservation in clusters fixes the total momentum fraction carried by the gluons.) Good description of the small enhancement above unity of the EMC ratio (antishadowing) around $`x=0.1`$ requires inclusion of up to 12q clusters but the essential features of the data are accommodated by a truncation to the 6q term and use of an effective 6q cluster probability, $`f`$. The observed shadowing of the structure function, $`F_2`$, in the nucleus for low $`x_B`$ and the depletion for intermediate $`x`$ combined with the QCD sum rules require the presence of antishadowing of $`F_2`$ for other values of $`x`$. This antishadowing, however, need not be restricted to the range $`0.05<x<0.2`$. In fact, this model predicts antishadowing for $`x>0.8`$ in agreement with the data of Ref.  on the slope of the Ca over deuterium structure function ratio. In addition, the electron DIS data from SLAC confirm the excellent agreement of this model with the observed nuclear dependence for all $`x>0.1`$ . The model has been successfully applied to explain nuclear effects in Drell-Yan processes  and gives interesting predictions for these effects at RHIC energies . Direct photon production in hadron-nucleus collisions  has also been predicted to be altered by nuclear effects.

The probability $`f`$ depends on $`A`$ approximately logarithmically and is 0.040-0.052 for deuterium . Very dense nuclei (<sup>4</sup>He) have $`f`$ values larger than the logarithmic prediction. In the scaling limit the Nq proton-like cluster parton momentum distributions are assumed to have standard forms,

$`V_N^{u,d}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`B_N^{u,d}\sqrt{x}(1x)^{b_N^{u,d}},b_N^d=b_N^u+1,`$ (4)   
$`S_N(x)`$ $`=`$ $`A_N(1x)^{a_N},A_N=x_N^S(1+a_N),`$ (5)   
$`G_N(x)`$ $`=`$ $`C_N(1x)^{c_N},C_N=x_N^G(1+c_N).`$ (6)   
The exponents that best describe the NMC data are ($`b_3^u,a_3,b_6^u,a_6`$) = (3, 9, 10, 11). For the gluon exponents the direct $`\gamma `$ data suggest ($`c_3,c_6`$) = (6, 10) . The valence exponents approximately follow the dimensional counting rules. The ocean consists of three species of quarks (and their antiparticles) with the strange distribution being half as large as the up (or down) quark sea distribution. The gluon momentum fraction is taken 5 times larger than the ocean one. Isospin invariance relations connect the distributions that belong to the same isospin states reducing, thus, the number of independent paramenters. Kinematics forces the fraction of the cluster momentum carried by a parton in 6q clusters, $`x^{(6)}`$, to be half as large as that in nucleons, $`x^{(3)}`$. In this model the QCD sum rules are explicitly obeyed. Furhter description can be found in Refs. .

### 3.3 Theoretical cross sections

Including 3q and 6q clusters in the nucleus the doubly differential hadron level cross section for quarkonium production is calculated from the $`\alpha _s^2`$ order parton level ones (with both quark annihilation ($`q\overline{q}`$) and gluon fusion ($`gg`$) included). The latter are convoluted with the appropriate sums of products of parton distributions $`H_{q\overline{q}}^{(i)}(x_1,x_2^{(i)})`$ and $`H_{gg}^{(i)}(x_1,x_2^{(i)})`$ ($`i=3,6`$), respectively . The indices 1 and 2 refer to the probe (moving in the $`+z`$ direction in the laboratory) and the target, respectively. The duality (in effect color evaporation) hypothesis is applied to integrate the differential cross section over $`m^2`$ with $`m`$ ranging from twice the $`c(b)`$ quark mass, $`2m_{c(b)}`$, to the open charm (bottom) threshold, $`2m_{D(B)}`$. Here $`m_D=1.864`$ GeV and $`m_B=5.278`$ GeV. The duality constant, $`F_d`$, is simply the portion of the total charmonium cross section (up to a given order) that corresponds to the quarkonium; it cancels in cross section ratios. The resulting cross section can be expressed as a function of the longitudinal momentum fraction carried by the produced quark-antiquark pair, $`x_F=2p_L/\sqrt{s}`$. The higher order corrections are assumed to result in a multiplicative factor, $`K`$. The transverse momentum dependence due to higher order diagrams is, thus, integrated over and that due to the intrinsic transverse momentum of the partons is neglected. These considerations lead to the order $`\alpha _s^2`$ equation

$$\frac{d\sigma ^{(A)}}{dx_F}=KF_d_{4m_{c(b)}^2}^{4m_{D(B)}^2}𝑑m^2\underset{i=3,6}{}J^{(i)}\left[H_{q\overline{q}}^{(i)}\widehat{\sigma }_{q\overline{q}}(m^2)+H_{gg}^{(i)}\widehat{\sigma }_{gg}(m^2)\right],$$
(7)   
where $`\widehat{\sigma }_{q\overline{q}}`$ and $`\widehat{\sigma }_{gg}`$ are the partonic-level cross sections for the two hard processes and $`J^{(i)}`$ are the Jacobians that transform $`x_1`$ and $`x_2^{(i)}`$ to $`x_F`$ and $`m^2`$. In this way the entire quarkonium yield is found. The various final states being unitary rearrangements of one another have up to this point the same dependence on EMC-type nuclear effects at the same $`\sqrt{s}`$. The perturbative $`Q^2`$ evolution of the parton distributions is omitted as it largely cancels in the calculation of cross section ratios. In addition, the $`Q^2`$ values that are relevant to the production of quarkonium states are inside the scaling region in which the parton distributions used in this work are valid.

### 3.4 Final state absorption

After its production the $`c\overline{c}`$ ($`b\overline{b}`$) system propagates in the nuclear medium developing into a quarkonium state which then decays into the observed lepton pairs. During this stage the system may be inelastically scattered by 3q and 6q clusters. It is reasonable to assume that the scattering occurs with clusters bound in the nucleus since the break up time of the latter exceeds the time the pair needs to traverse the nuclear radius. The $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ absorption cross section has been measured to be $`\sigma _{abs}^{(3)}`$ 3.5 mbarn/nucleon . This number has been extracted in a kinematic range in which parton distribution modifications are negligibly small ($`x_20.22`$, the point at which the EMC ratio crosses the unit line) and since it is the average absorption cross section over the path traversed in the nucleus, color transparency effects are already in it. The $`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}`$ is attenuated a little more than the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ due to its larger radius. In this It is also assumed that the cross section for bottomonium ($`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ states) absorption is of the same order as that of charmonium but smaller ($`3`$ mbarn/nucleon) due to its more compact size.

The cross section on a 6q cluster is $`2^{3/2}`$ times larger than that on a nucleon (bag model estimate) but the density of scattering centers in the medium is reduced when $`f0`$. Then

$$\rho \sigma _{abs}=\sigma _{abs}^{(3)}\rho _A[(1f)+2^{3/2}f]/(1+f),$$
(8)   
where $`\rho _A`$ is the number density of the nucleus $`A`$ taken as constant within the nuclear volume. The average path length the $`c\overline{c}`$ ($`b\overline{b}`$) pair travels in an approximately spherical nucleus of radius $`r_A`$ estimated by means of a simple geometrical (not eikonal) calculation is $`L_A2r_A/\pi `$. The experimentally measured nuclear RMS radii  are employed to compute $`\rho _A`$ and $`L_A`$. The cross section in Eq.(7) is then attenuated by the factor

$$P_A=\mathrm{exp}[\rho \sigma _{abs}L_A].$$
(9)   
## 4 Charmonium Suppression

The nuclear dependence is extracted by taking the ratio, $`R_A`$, of the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ production cross section per unit $`A`$ in collisions of a hadron, proton in this case, with a heavy nucleus to that in collisions with a light one and examining its $`x_F`$ dependence. Since the $`K`$-factor may also depend on $`x_F`$ at first we examine the ratio of the experimental to the order $`\alpha _s^2`$ theoretical cross section. In Fig. 1 we present this ratio for Cu and Be using a representative set of parameters for our model and the data of Ref. . $`F_d`$ is the same in both cases and cancels in the ratio. Clearly the $`K`$-factor exhibits a strong $`x_F`$ dependence but, most importantly for our purposes, is the same for the two nuclei. This implies that it will cancel in ratios of two theoretical or experimental cross sections. The origin of this factor must, thus, lie in processes that do not depend on the size and intrinsic properties of the nucleus (the absorption part is included in the results of Fig. 1). The $`x_F`$ dependence of $`K`$ in Fig. 1 agrees with that of the ratio of the “diffractive” to hard cross sections in Ref. . Issues related to the relative suppression of various charmonium states are outside the scope of this article.

The results for $`R_A`$ are confronted with the data of Ref.  in Fig. 2. The dotted lines in Fig. 2 represent the prediction of the full model including 6q clusters and final state absorption with the lowest (highest) value of $`f`$ for the heavy (light) nucleus and the largest values of the 6q ocean and gluon exponents, ($`a_6,c_6`$) = (12, 11); the solid ones correspond to the opposite $`f`$ combination and ($`a_6,c_6`$) = (10, 9). In order to make the influence of the initial and final state contributions to $`R_A`$ clear in Fig. 2(d) the results without final state absorption are shown (short and long dash curves with the same connotation as the dotted and solid ones, respectively) as well as the result with only final state absorption, $`f=0`$ (dot-dash line). It is evident that the predictions of the full model are in agreement with the data. We note in passing that for large negative $`x_F`$ this model predicts antishadowing of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ production in p-A collisions because in this region large $`x_2`$ values for the gluon distribution ratio are accessed.

## 5 Bottomonium Suppression

Using the model we described earlier we can also calculate the suppression ratio for the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ states and compare the results with the data of Ref. . Specifically we calculate the exponent $`\alpha `$ defined by means of the equation

$$\frac{d\sigma ^{(A)}}{dx_2}=A^\alpha \frac{d\sigma ^{(d)}}{dx_2},$$
(10)   
where the superscripts refer to large nuclei ($`A`$) or deuterium ($`d`$) targets and $`x_2=x_2^{(3)}`$. At this point it is instructive to observe that gluon fusion dominates the charmonium production process and is very important for bottomonium production as well. Therefore, the ratio of cross sections to a large extent reflects the ratio of gluon distributions, $`R_G^{(A)}`$. It is not hard to see that with the given definition of gluon distributions $`R_G^{(A)}`$ monotonically increases with $`x_2`$. As shown in Fig. 3, however, the data of Ref.  contradict this theoretical prediction. At $`x_20.15`$ there is a wide “bump” and the ratio starts decreasing at higher $`x_2`$. The reason that this behavior becomes more apparent in the case of $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ production is the fact that the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ is much more massive than the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$. For given center of mass energy, a particular quarkonium momentum, $`x_F`$, probes a larger $`x_2`$ value in the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ case. The gluon distributions being the most relevant and the least known among all the partons should be the first candidates for improvement.

### 5.1 Improved gluon distributions

At this point we turn to Information Theory. The total momentum fractions carried by the partons in an Nq cluster,

$$z_N^{(a)}=_0^1𝑑xF_N^{(a)}(x),$$
(11)   
where $`a`$ designates the type of parton and $`F_N^{(a)}`$ is the momentum distribution of $`a`$, must always add up to unity. Consequently the functions $`F_N^{(a)}`$ satisfy the condition required in order to define an information entropy for them,

$$S_N=\underset{a}{}_0^1𝑑xF_N^{(a)}(x)\mathrm{ln}F_N^{(a)}(x).$$
(12)   
We shall maintain the quark distributions as defined in the previous section and modify the gluon distributions under the constraint that the total momentum fraction carried by gluons in each type of cluster is fixed and equal to that of the unmodified distributions, i.e., $`z_3^{(g)}=0.57`$ for nucleons and $`z_6^{(g)}=0.60`$ for 6q clusters.

The trend of the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ data suggests that the simplest possible modification to the gluon distributions is an alteration of the linear term in $`x`$. We will, then, define corrected momentum distributions for the gluons in nucleons and 6q clusters as

$$G_N(x)=C_N(1x)^{c_N}+C_N^{}x.$$
(13)   
For each $`N`$ we now have two unknown parameters $`C_N`$ and $`C_N^{}`$. Momentum conservation, i.e., that the fractions $`z_N^{(g)}`$ are constant, imposes the condition

$$C_N^{}=2z_N^{(g)}\frac{2C_N}{c_N+1},$$
(14)   
where the exponents $`c_N`$ are kept fixed, $`c_3=6`$ and $`c_6=10`$. Then we evaluate $`C_N`$ from the requirement

$$\frac{S_N}{C_N}=0.$$
(15)   
The maximization procedure yields the following numbers: $`(C_3,C_3^{})=(1.163,\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}0.812})`$ and $`(C_6,C_6^{})=(1.411,\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}0.987})`$. We can compare these numbers with the uncorrected ones: $`(C_3,C_3^{})_{uncorr}=(4.130,\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}0.0})`$ and $`(C_6,C_6^{})_{uncorr}=(6.624,\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}0.0})`$. We have thus changed the shape of the function without affecting its integral, the total gluon momentum. The behavior of the new functions differs from that of the old ones mostly in the large $`x`$ region for which on the other hand we have little experimental data. We note that the ocean distributions could not accommodate such type of alteration because deeply inelastic scattering imposes a constraint on the ratio of neutron to proton structure functions, $`F_2^{(n)}(x)/F_2^{(p)}(x)1/4`$ as $`x1`$.

Using the corrected distributions we can recalculate the exponent $`\alpha `$ and compare the results with the data. With a final state absorption cross section of 3 mbarn/nucleon and the new distributions the agreement with the data is considerably improved as shown in Fig. 3 in which the upper curve corresponds to the uncorrected model, the lower curve to the corrected model using only gluon fusion contributions and the middle curve to the corrected model including gluon fusion and quark annihilation. It must be pointed out that this is not the only model that gives reasonable description of the relative $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ to $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ suppression data in p-A collisions. The authors of Ref.  attribute the smaller suppression of $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ to the $`Q^2m^2`$ evolution of the distribution functions, where $`m`$ is the mass of the resonance. Indeed, as discussed in Ref.  the evolution of the ocean (and consequently the gluon) distributions leads to smaller shadowing as $`Q^2`$ decreases. Our model neglects the $`Q^2`$ evolution relying on the observation  that the masses of the quarkonium resonances are already in the scaling region and attributes the reduced $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ suppression to its smaller absorption cross section. It is conceivable that both effects may, in fact, contribute to this phenomenon. We would mostly like to emphasize that it is the shape of the suppression curve that needed to be improved to account for the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ data.

It is worthwhile noting that due to the fact that $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ production probes a different kinematic regime from $`J/\psi `$ the correction on the gluon distributions has only a small effect on the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression curves. The agreement with the charmonium data is still good as it can be observed in Fig. 4, although it slightly deteriorates at small $`x_F`$ (large $`x_2`$). In addition the corrected model does not exhibit antishadowing of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ production for negative $`x_F`$ a feature that would be in contradiction with the data . Data on bottomonium and charmonium give complementary information on the gluon distributions in nuclei. In addition the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ is a really good probe of the initial state in which it is produced due to low absorption cross section.

### 5.2 Predictions for RHIC

We can use this model to make predictions for the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ suppression at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) with $`\sqrt{s}=200`$ GeV/nucleon. The calculation proceeds along the same lines as for p-A collisions but now there is the additional possibility of 6q-6q cluster collisions. The nuclear effect is, thus, more pronounced. The cross section for collisions of a nucleus A with a nucleus B is 

$$\frac{d\sigma ^{(AB)}}{dx_F}=KF_d_{4m_c(b)^2}^{4m_{D(B)}^2}𝑑m^2\underset{i=3,6}{}\underset{j=3,6}{}J^{(i,j)}\left[H_{q\overline{q}}^{(i,j)}\widehat{\sigma }_{q\overline{q}}+H_{gg}^{(i,j)}\widehat{\sigma }_{gg}\right],$$
(16)   
where $`J^{(i,j)}=x_1^{(i)}x_2^{(j)}/[m^2(x_1^{(i)}+x_2^{(j)})]`$, $`i`$ and $`j`$ represent the type of colliding cluster, $`\sqrt{s}`$ is the nucleon-nucleon CM energy and $`H_{q\overline{q}(gg)}^{(i,j)}`$ are functions of parton distributions appropriate for A-B collisions.

In Fig. 5 we show theoretical results obtained with the uncorrected (curves marked by (d))  and the corrected (curves marked by (c)) models. The curves exhibiting less suppression are for the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$. The corrected model leads to larger suppression. The large $`x_F`$ behavior is now much more distinct. It can be understood if we realize that in symmetric heavy ion collisions as $`x_F1`$ the large $`x`$ region for the positively moving nucleus is probed. Therefore, in the uncorrected model the ratio increases with $`x_F`$ reflecting the increase in the gluon distribution ratio and exhibits antishadowing while in the corrected one it flattens out and remains below unity.

## 6 Conclusions

We have applied Information Theory to improve the gluon momentum distribution functions in nuclei, including the “EMC effect”. The main idea is that by defining an information entropy, $`S`$, for those functions whose total integral is unity we can evaluate their parameters by maximizing $`S`$ with respect to them. In other words we assume that the best choice of parameters is the one that is consistent with maximal ignorance under the constraint of momentum conservation. A quark-cluster model for the “EMC effect” has been used to establish good agreement with the data on $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression in p-A collisions but proved inadequate to describe $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ suppression. Then Information Theory provided us with a tool to improve the model with significant success. The gluon distributions have been corrected for their behavior at large $`x`$ and an overall agreement with the differential cross sections for quarkonium suppression was achieved.

An interesting aspect of this method is that it does not rely on any specific microscopic theory which in turn should be investigated in detail but uses only very general notions. The solution that is consistent with the assumption of maximal ignorance, quantified by the information entropy, seems to be an optimal one. This method can be used to improve the parameters of more detailed and realistic parton distributions in nucleons and nuclei under constraints imposed by experimental data.

The author would like to thank R. Vogt, S. Gavin and A. Plastino for useful discussions.