Minijets and transverse energy flow in high energy collisions - art. no. 034004

When studying the production of minijets and transverse energy flow in high energy hadron-hadron or nucleus-nucleus collisions, two essential points h ave to be taken into account. First, one has to account for the virtuality of the colliding partons and, second, it is important to avoid double count ing, when many links in a parton chain can be interpreted as the momentum t ransfer in a hard subcollision. The linked dipole chain model, introduced f or low-x DIS, is particularly suitable for a study of these problems. It de scribes (mini)jet production in a k(perpendicular to)-factorizing formalism , which includes all links in a parton chain on an equal footing, avoiding double counting. In a "naive" calculation based on integrated structure fun ctions, the cross section blows up for small p(perpendicular to), which mak es it necessary to introduce a soft cutoff. In our approach we find a dynam ical suppression at low p(perpendicular to), which makes it possible to ext rapolate to higher energies and make more reliable predictions for BNL RHIC and CERN LHC.