Enhanced minijet production in A–A collisions from gluons with large transverse momenta

We find supersaturation for the intrinsic gluon distribution of nuclei, i.e., the low x unintegrated nuclear gluon distribution peaks at intermediate transverse momenta kt=Qs and vanishes at zero kt. Taking into account the intrinsic transverse momenta of the gluons and the saturation scale ps of the produced gluons, we calculate the minijet cross section arising from gluon gluon scattering for RHIC energies. For central collisions at s=200 GeV the saturation scale ps≈1.4 GeV is larger due to intrinsic kt effects and increases with energy. Our theoretical results on charged particle multiplicity agree very well with the recent experimental data from RHIC.