Saturation and Geometrical Scaling: from Deep Inelastic ep Scattering to Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

Saturation of gluon distribution is a consequence of the non-linear evolution equations of QCD. Saturation implies the existence of so called saturation momentum which is defined as a gluon density per unit rapidity per transverse area. At large energies for certain kinematical domains saturation momentum is the only scale for physical processes. As a consequence different observables exhibit geometrical scaling (GS). We discuss a number of examples of GS in different reactions.