Eur. Phys. J. A 11, 457-465 (2001)

Excitation of color degrees of freedom of nuclear matter and suppression

J. Hüfner^{1, 2}, B.Z. Kopeliovich^{2, 3} and A. Polleri<sup>1

1</sup>  Institut für Theoretische Physik der Universität, Philosophenweg 19, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany
²  Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik, Postfach 103980, D-69029 Heidelberg, Germany
³  Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna 141980, Moscow Region, Russia

polleri@physik.tu-muenchen.de

(Received: 6 November 2000 / Revised version: 11 April 2001 Communicated by A. Schäfer)

Abstract
In high-energy nuclear collisions, the conventional Glauber model is commonly used to evaluate the contribution to suppression originating from the inelastic interaction with colorless bound nucleons. This requires an effective value for the -nucleon absorption cross-section which is larger than theoretically expected. On the other hand, multiple nucleon-nucleon collisions, mediated by color exchange interactions, excite their color degrees of freedom. We investigate the importance of this effect and find that these excited states provide a larger cross-section for absorption. We conclude that the related corrections are important to explain the effective value extrapolated from experiment.

PACS
25.75.Dw - Particle and resonance production.

© Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2001