Hadron Production in Nuclear Collisions—a New Parton-Model Approach

We consider a quark-parton model in which wee partons of the projectile interact with wee partons of essentially independent nucleons in the nuclear target. The ratio of multiplicities in the central region is 〈n〉HA〈n〉HN=1/2ν+ν(ν+1), where ν is the mean number of inelastic collisions of the projectile H, in agreement with experiment. We also predict nucleus-nucleus multiplicities, the multiplicity distribution, and the absence of shadowing in large-q² and large-pT reactions.