The instanton/sphaleron mechanism of prompt gluon production in high energy heavy ion collisions at RHIC

We argue that if the growing part of hadron-hadron cross section (described phenomenologically by the supercritical soft Pomeron) is due to instanton/ sphaleron mechanism, one should find certain qualitative features of the pr oduced cluster which differ from the usual string fragmentation. Furthermor e, we suggest that this mechanism should be even more important for heavy i on collisions in the RHIC energy domain. Large number of parton-parton coll isions should result in hundreds of produced sphaleron-like gluomagnetic cl usters per unit rapidity. Unlike perturbative gluons (or mini-jets), these classically unstable objects promptly decay into several gluons and quarks in mini-explosions, leading to very rapid entropy generation. This may help to explain why the QGP seem to be produced at RHIC so early. We further ar gue that this mechanism cannot be important at higher energies (LHC), where perturbative description should apply. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Scie nce B.V.