A Pomeron Approach to Hadron-Nucleus and Nucleus-Nucleus "Soft" Interactions at High Energy

Abstract

We formulate a generalization of the Glauber formalism for hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions based on the Pomeron approach to high energy interactions. Our treatment is based on two physical assumptions (i.e. two small parameters) : (i) that only sufficiently small distances contribute to the Pomeron structure; and (ii) the triple Pomeron vertex $G_{3P}/g_{P-N} \ll 1$ (where $g_{P-N}$ is the Pomeron-nucleon vertex) is small. A systematic method is developed for calculating the total, elastic and diffractive dissociation cross sections as well as the survival probability of large rapidity gap processes and inclusive observables, both for hadron - nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. Our approach suggests saturation of the density of the produced hadrons in nucleus-nucleus collisions, the value of the saturation density turns out to be large and depends on the number of nucleons in the lightest nucleus.