On the jet spectrum in nucleus–nucleus interactions Original Research Article

We derive the inclusive transverse spectrum of minijets in nuclear collisions at very high energies, by assuming that the nuclear S-matrix factorizes as a product elastic S-matrices of elementary partonic collisions. Interference effects and, in particular, the contribution of loop diagrams are fully taken into account in the derivation of the spectrum, which is shown to coincide with the result already obtained by superposing the elementary interactions incoherently. A quantitative analysis confirms that the deformation induced by multiple collsions is a large effect at RHIC and LHC energies, for transverse momenta ∼20 GeV.