Ion induced quark-gluon implosion

Abstract

We investigate nuclear fragmentation in the central proton-nucleus and nucleus - nucleus collisions at the energies of LHC. We argue that within the semi-classical approximation because of fast increase with energy of cross sections of soft and hard interactions each nucleon is stripped in the average process off ``soft'' partons and fragments into a collection of leading quarks and gluons with large $p_t$. Valence quarks and gluons are streaming in the opposite directions when viewed in the c.m. of the produced system. The resulting pattern of the fragmentation of the colliding nuclei leads to an implosion of the quark and gluon constituents of the nuclei. The matter density produced at the initial stage in the nucleus fragmentation region is estimated to be $\geq$ 50 GeV/fm$^3$ at the LHC energies and probably $\geq$ 10 GeV/fm$^3$ at RHIC.