HIGH ENERGY SCATTERING IN QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS

Abstract

In this series of three lectures, we discuss several aspects of high energy scattering among hadrons in Quantum Chromodynamics. The first lecture is devoted to a description of the parton model, Bjorken scaling and the scaling violations due to the evolution of parton distributions with the transverse resolution scale. The second lecture describes parton evolution at small momentum fraction x, the phenomenon of gluon saturation and the Color Glass Condensate (CGC). In the third lecture, we present the application of the CGC to the study of high energy hadronic collisions, with emphasis on nucleus-nucleus collisions. In particular, we provide the outline of a proof of high energy factorization for inclusive gluon production.