Eur. Phys. J. C (2005) 43: 353-360
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2005-02185-1

Theoretical Physics

Nuclear size and rapidity dependence of the saturation scale from QCD evolution and experimental data

¹ Departamento de Física, Universidad de Córdoba, 14071, Córdoba, Spain
² Department of Physics, CERN, Theory Division, 1211, Genéve, Switzerland
³ Departamento de Física de Partículas, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15706, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
⁴ Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), CENTRA, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal

^* e-mail: Jose.Guilherme.Milhano@cern.ch

Received: 18 February 2005
Published online: 8 April 2005

Abstract

The solutions of the Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution equations are studied numerically and compared with known analytical estimations. The rapidity and nuclear size dependences of the saturation scale are obtained for the cases of fixed and running coupling constant. These same dependences are studied in experimental data, on lepton-nucleus, deuteron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions, through geometric scaling and compared with the theoretical calculations.