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# Ab initio calculations of the hydrogen bond

## I Introduction

The hydrogen bond is one of the least well-understood components in the energy decomposition that is used to predict the folding of biological complexes such as proteins. Its importance stems from its directionality and modest bonding energies midway between strong covalent and weak Van der Waals bonds. For this reason the inter-molecular interaction is difficult to characterize. Recently, X-ray Compton scattering measurements in ice revealed subtle oscillations in the profile anisotropy, which can be interpreted as reflecting various quantum mechanical aspects of the hydrogen bond . In simple descriptions of the hydrogen bond , the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of a proton acceptor momomer can be viewed as a lone pair $`p`$ state of the oxygen, while the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) of the donor neighbor molecule is the antibonding OH orbital. Therefore, the problem can be reduced to an effective 2 by 2 eigenvalue calculation where the HOMO-LUMO mixing can in principle be measured by an angle $`\theta `$. In this effective model the amount of charge transferred can be defined as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }Q=|\mathrm{cos}\theta <𝐫|0>+\mathrm{sin}\theta <𝐫|1><𝐫|0>|^2d^3𝐫$$
(1)
where $`<𝐫|0>`$ is the wavefunction of the lone pair and $`<𝐫|1>`$ is the wavefunction of the LUMO at the donor neighbor molecule. When the mixing is small, one obtains $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q\mathrm{sin}^2\theta `$. Besides, in this limit, $`\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ turns to be approximately proportional to the energy gain due to the hydrogen bond.

Compton scattering gives us information on the (ground state) electronic momentum distribution of the system under study. Of particular interest is the width $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ of the momentum density over which the valence momentum density falls to zero around a cutoff momentum (Fermi momentum in a metal). Since the LUMO contains higher momentum components than the HOMO, the variation of the width $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ is clearly related to the mixing $`\theta `$. Moreover, Friedel and Peter provided a useful discussion on the impact in momentum density of the mixing of occupied with virtual orbitals. Their arguments can be extended to the present case in order to estimate the charge transfer mixing angle. We limit our discussion here to the more general concept of charge transfer without invoking the term covalency . As a matter of fact ionic compounds are also characterized by a charge transfer but they are certainly not described as covalent systems.

This paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II we present the computational method and recall the definitions of the quantities studied. Sect. III is devoted to estimate the charge transfer and to describe its properties in position space. Finally, Sec IV summarizes our main conclusions.

## II Method

We start with the one-particle density matrix, $`\widehat{\rho }(𝐫,𝐫^{})`$, which is defined in terms of the normalized N-particle wavefunction, $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$, as

$$\widehat{\rho }(𝐫,𝐫^{})=N𝑑\xi \mathrm{\Psi }^{}(𝐫,\xi )\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐫^{},\xi ).$$
(2)
where the integral extends over the coordinates of all other particles. If the many body wavefunction is represented by a single determinant, which is true in the case of Hartree Fock then the density matrix is idempotent $`(\widehat{\rho }=\widehat{\rho }^2)`$ and reduces to a summation over the occupied spin-dependent orbitals $`\psi _i`$, i.e.

$$\widehat{\rho }(𝐫,𝐫^{})=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\psi _i(𝐫)\psi _i^{}(𝐫^{}).$$
(3)
The Electron Momentum Density (EMD) is defined as the momentum transform of the density matrix,

$$\rho (𝐩)=\frac{1}{8\pi ^3}d^3𝐫d^3𝐫^{}\widehat{\rho }(𝐫,𝐫^{})\mathrm{exp}(i𝐩(𝐫𝐫^{})).$$
(4)
Note that, in general, the EMD involves off-diagonal elements of the real space density matrix. In connection with the Compton spectra, it should be noted that the Compton profile (CP), $`J(p_z)`$, represents the double integral of the ground-state EMD $`\rho (𝒑)`$:

$$J(p_z)=\rho (𝐩)𝑑p_x𝑑p_y,$$
(5)
where $`p_z`$ lies along the scattering vector of the x-rays.

The program used in the present work was CRYSTAL98 , which is especially appropriate for first-principles calculations of the density matrix $`\widehat{\rho }(𝐫,𝐫^{})`$ in extended (periodic) and in molecular systems. For the ice crystal we have used the experimental atomic distances. We have also considered the dimer and cluster containing 12 water molecules which are shown in Fig. 1. The O-O distances and the orientations of the atoms in the cluster and in the dimer are equal to the corresponding ones in the crystal. The CRYSTAL98 program employs linear combination of atomic orbitals for solving the Hartree-Fock equation. One can show that the wavefunction involved in the hydrogen bond are described reasonably well already at the level of the Hartree-Fock approximation . The occupied orbitals used to determine the momentum density and the Compton profile are calculated using the Restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF) scheme with the 6-31G<sup>∗∗</sup> basis set .

## III Results

The density of state (DOS) of the ice crystal is shown in Fig.2. The band gap is about 15 eV. In the occupied bands, one can notice two high peaks near -20 eV and near -13 eV. For comparison, in the dimer the calculated RHF energies of the 8 valence occupied states are -37 eV, -36 eV, -20 eV, -19 eV, -16 eV, -15 eV, -14 eV and -13 eV. The electronic density of these dimer states has been visualized by Chaplin . One can see that the densities of the orbitals corresponding to -19 eV and to -15 eV show overlap across the hydrogen bond. Interestingly, the two peaks of the crystal DOS correspond to dimer orbitals orthogonal to the hydrogen bond: $`20`$ eV corresponds to a state strongly localized on the acceptor molecule while $`13`$ eV corresponds to a state localized on the donor water molecule. Clearly the dimer has some very important things to tell us about the nature of the hydrogen bond. The projected DOS shown in Fig.3 reveals that the peaks near $`20`$ eV is a combination of 2pO and (1sH,2sH) while the peak near $`13`$ eV is almost a pure 2pO. Moreover, one can notice that the highest occupied bands are mostly a combination of 2pO and (1sH,2sH) states with a very small 2sO contribution. This picture is therefore consistent with the charge transfer theories  explaining the hydrogen bond by the mixing of the oxygen lone pair with an antibonding OH orbital centered on a neighbor molecule.

In order to extract molecular energies and other properties, it can be useful to build a density matrix as a superposition of density matrices of isolated molecules arranged in the same geometry as in the crystal or the cluster. The keyword MOLSPLIT (in the CRYSTAL 98 input) performs an expansion of the lattice, in such a way that the molecules of the system are at an infinite distance from each other to avoid inter-molecular interactions. Our calculations indicate that the gain in energy per hydrogen bond in the crystal is $`0.5`$ eV. This energy gain is strengthened by a factor of two as one goes up in the cluster size.

Our aim in this work is to probe theoretically the effects of the hydrogen bond in water by evaluating the changes it provokes in the electronic momentum distribution which can be probed using an experimentally accessible quantity, the Compton profile. For this we use the spherical average of the momentum density $`n(p)`$ which can be obtained from the isotropic, or spherically averaged Compton profile $`J(p)`$ by the formula

$$n(p)=\frac{1}{p}\frac{dJ(p)}{dp}.$$
(6)
The spherical averages $`J(p)`$ and $`n(p)`$ are thus used for the evaluation of a quantity $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$, defined as the full-width at half maximum of the broad maximum exhibited by the function $`dn(p)/dp`$ (see Fig. 4). This maximum corresponds to the typical valence cutoff momentum (the Fermi momentum in the case of a metal). In the limit of a small mixing angle, formulae similar to those given by Friedel and Peter indicate that $`\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ is proportional to the variation of the momentum density smearing width. Moreover, by assuming a linear scaling between the momentum width and the energy separation of the effective 2 by 2 eigenvalue problem, we obtain

$$\mathrm{sin}\theta \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }p\mathrm{\Delta }p_0}{\mathrm{\Delta }p_0},$$
(7)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }p_0`$ corresponds to the single water molecule and $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ to hydrogen bonded water structure being probed.

The radial derivative of $`dn(p)/dp`$ is shown in Fig. 5 for the water molecule, the dimer, the cluster containing 12 water molecules and the ice crystal. The increase of $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ as a function of the cluster size is striking. The $`\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ given by Eq. (7) it is strengthened by a factor of two as one goes from the dimer to the crystal. Thus, these estimates yield values consistent with the trends observed in the total energy calculations. The amount of charge transferred is about $`0.5\%`$ of an electron in the dimer , $`1\%`$ in the cluster and $`2\%`$ in the crystal. Interestingly these values are in reasonable agreement with other estimates of the charge transfer given in previous quantum mechanical calculations . Finally, in Fig. 5 we also notice a shift of the maximum of the function $`dn(p)/dp`$ as a function of the cluster size, which can explain an observed increase of the kinetic energy.

In order to show how Compton scattering data can assist in the interpretation of the bonding properties in position space, one can define a function $`B(𝐫)`$ which is the Fourier transform of the momentum density ,

$$B(𝐫)=\rho (𝐩)\mathrm{exp}(i𝐩𝐫)d^3𝐩.$$
(8)
From the convolution theorem, $`B(𝐫)`$ is just the autocorrelation of the one-electron wave functions. Moreover $`B(𝐫)`$ in a given direction can be calculated as the Fourier transform of the Compton profile in this direction. The orbital contribution of the 1s core electron of oxygen vanishes beyond 1.5 Å so that the $`B(𝐫)`$ is dominated by valence electrons. By analyzing $`B(𝐫)`$ in the direction $`z`$ parallel to the hydrogen bond, we observe a negative local minima near 2 Å, a positive local maximum near 3 Å and finally a negative local minima at higher distances as shown in Fig.6. The corresponding lines along $`x`$ and $`y`$, also plotted in in Fig.6, differ substantially from the $`z`$ direction. Both $`x`$ and $`y`$ curves are quite similar and present only the local negative minima near 2 Å, which is broader toward the large distances, and then their amplitudes go to zero at larger distances. The total autocorrelation function $`B(𝐫)`$ can be also interpreted in relation to the hydrogen bond with a comparison to isolated aligned molecules (obtained by MOLSPLIT). The isolated water molecules curves are shown in the bottom part of Fig.6 along $`x`$, $`y`$ and $`z`$. One can observe that none of these curves presents the oscillations that characterizes the $`z`$ direction in the crystal. The autocorrelation function $`B(𝐫)`$ along the direction of the strongest hydrogen bond is shown in Fig. 7 for the crystal and the dimer. Both curves deviate strongly from the monomer curve. They also present some clear differences among them: the crystal possesses a deeper minimum and a somewhat lower maximum at 3 Å. However, beyond 4 Å the two curves cannot anymore be distinguished indicating that the charge transfer occurs mostly within this distance range.

## IV Conclusion

In conclusion, this study confirms that the Compton profile is a useful tool for the investigation of the quantum nature of hydrogen bond in ice  and probably in other compounds such as urea , RNA and DNA . Our results show a unique sensitivity of Compton scattering to the momentum width $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$. In this work an attempt has been done to give an estimate of the HOMO-LUMO mixing from Compton profiles. The present method can be also used for amorphous materials where Compton profiles anisotropies are not available. Moreover, we have used the directional Compton profiles to study the bonding properties in the position space by using the autocorrelation functions. We have determined that the charge transfer occurs mostly within a range of about 4 Å . The present work also shows that x-ray inelastic scattering experiments can shed light on the important role in short hydrogen bonds played by quantum mechanical charge transfer between nearest molecules. These phenomena cannot be described by the standard effective classical potentials used for instance in some water clusters simulations .

We wish to acknowledge enriching discussions with P.M. Platzman, D.R. Hamann, E.D. Isaacs, W. Weyrich, N. Marzari and M. Boero. We also thank S. Ragot for sending us ref. , Y. Zhukovski and S. Piskunovs for helping us to visualize the projected DOS and A. Gullà for a careful reading of the manuscript. This work is supported by the US Department of Energy under Contract No. W-31-109-ENG-38, and benefited from the allocation of supercomputer time at the Northeastern University Advanced Scientific Computation Center (NU-ASCC).


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# Extreme emission line outflows in the GPS source 4C 12.50 (PKS 1345+12)

## 1 Introduction

The narrow line region (NLR $`<`$ 5 kpc) is an important probe of the ISM close to the central engine in radio galaxies (Tadhunter et al., 2001).

Powerful extended radio galaxies have kinematics generally consistent with gravitational motions in the bulges of the host galaxies (e.g. Heckman et al., 1984). In contrast, GPS radio sources ($`<`$ 1 kpc in size) show evidence for kinematic disturbance (Gelderman & Whittle, 1994). Highly complex broad emission lines are observed but the nature of the emission line kinematics is still not understood. Asymmetries are believed to be the spectral signatures of systematic flows, but their direction (outflow or inflow) is still under dispute due to the lack of understanding of the dust distribution in the NLR, and lack of accurate host galaxy (rest frame) redshifts.

Compact radio sources are thought to be either young radio sources (e.g. Fanti et al., 1995) or intrinsically compact objects confined by an unusually dense ISM (the ‘frustration theory’, e.g. van Breugel, 1984). High reddening is expected in both scenarios - the nucleus is likely to be enshrouded by large amounts of gas and dust left over from the event(s) which triggered the activity (e.g. a merger, Heckman et al., 1986). With evolution, material along the radio axis will be dissipated by jet-cloud interactions and/or quasar-induced winds (Tadhunter et al., 2001). Eventually cavities will be hollowed out on either side of the nucleus, as is seen in the powerful extended radio source Cygnus A (Tadhunter et al., 1999).

## 2 Previous observations

4C 12.50 has a double nucleus and shows clear evidence for distorted morphology in the ionised gas: high resolution HST images reveal an arc-like structure 1.2 arcsec (2.8 kpc) N of the nucleus and fainter diffuse emission 2 arcsec (4.7 kpc) N of the nucleus (see figure 1). The radio source has distorted, triple morphology aligned along PA 160 with emission confined to a region $`<`$ 0.1 arcsec ($``$ 240 pc) in size (see figure 1). A bright knot towards the northern limit of the jet is tentatively identified as the core (Stanghellini et al., 1997). The jet extends 0.04 arcsec (95 pc) to the SE before bending and expanding into a diffuse lobe. Weak emission extends up to 0.03 arcsec (70 pc) NW of the core. (H0 = 75 km s-1, q0 = 0.0).

## 3 Results

These preliminary results are based on new, high resolution spectroscopic observations ($`0.7\AA `$/pix) with large spectral coverage ($`4500\AA `$) taken in 2001 May with the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) on La Palma. For all observations, the slit width was 1.3 arcsec and the seeing was $``$ 1.1 arcsec (FWHM) or better. For a complete analysis and discussion of PKS 1345+12, see Holt et al. (2002, in preparation).

### 3.1 Modelling the emission lines

The emission lines were modelled using the Starlink package DIPSO constraining, for example, the intensity ratios and shifts between doublet lines, where possible, in accordance with atomic physics. In order to model the unusually broad \[O III\]$`\lambda \lambda `$4959,5007 emission lines in the nucleus it is essential to use three Gaussians (see figure 2). These three components represent line emission from three distinct redshift systems:
i) A narrow component (FWHM $``$ 360 km s-1) assumed to emanate from the ambient, quiescent ISM. Its velocity is consistent with the deep HI 21cm absorption (Mirabel, 1989; see also Morganti et al., these proceedings), and the extended \[O II\] halo.
ii) An intermediate component (FWHM $``$ 1260 km s-1) blue-shifted by $``$ 400 km s-1 relative to the narrow component.
iii) A broad component (FWHM $``$ 1960 km s-1) blue-shifted by $``$ 1980 km s-1 relative to the narrow component.

The velocity shifts in the \[O III\] lines clearly indicate that they originate from three distinct regions along the line-of-sight. The narrowest component of \[O III\] is consistent with the spatially extended \[O II\] emission and HI absorption and represents the galaxy rest frame. Hence, the intermediate and broad components of \[O III\] trace material blue-shifted with respect to the galaxy system, suggesting that the ISM emitting these components is in outflow (see figure 3).

### 3.2 Evidence for high reddening in the nucleus

We measure E(B-V) values, calculated from the H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ ratio, of 0.06, 0.42 and 1.44 for the narrow, intermediate and broad components respectively. The broad component is highly reddened and corrections for reddening yield H$`\beta `$ fluxes a factor of 130 brighter than those measured. This reddening is consistent with Pa$`\alpha `$/H$`\alpha `$ ratios estimated using Pa$`\alpha `$ measurements from Veilleux et al. (1997). Note, the highly broadened Pa$`\alpha `$ component detected by Veilleux et al. is not associated with a classical Broad Line Region (BLR) as it is also observed in the forbidden lines and therefore represents a broadened NLR component.

### 3.3 Estimating the gas mass

Emission line luminosities are related to the mass of line emitting gas by:

Mgas = mp $`\frac{L(H\beta )}{N_e\alpha _{H\beta }^{eff}h\nu _{H\beta }}`$
where Ne is the electron density (cm-3); mp is the mass of the proton (kg); L(H$`\beta `$) is the luminosity of the H$`\beta `$ line: 0.44 $`\pm `$ 0.04, 5.50 $`\pm `$ 0.20 and 26.59 $`\pm `$ 0.59 (1040 erg s-1) for the narrow, intermediate and broad components respectively; $`\alpha _{H\beta }^{eff}`$ is the effective recombination coefficient for H$`\beta `$ (cm3 s-1; see Osterbrock 1989) and h$`\nu _{H\beta }`$ is the energy of the H$`\beta `$ photons (erg).

The density diagnostic, the \[S II\]$`\lambda \lambda `$6716,6730 doublet, can only be modelled with very high densities for the intermediate and broad components. We estimate lower limits for the density of the intermediate and broad components of $`4000`$ cm-3. These lead to an upper limit for the total mass of the line emitting gas of 9.17 $`\times 10^5`$ M.

## 4 Conclusions

Our data show:
$``$ complex broad emission lines;
$``$ blue shifts up to $``$ 2000 km s-1 with respect to the galaxy halo and HI absorption;
$``$ large reddening (broadest component E(B-V) $`1.44`$);
$``$ high densities and high ionisation for the intermediate and broad components.
For the blue shifted components we calculate:
$``$ a lower limit for the density;
$``$ an upper limit for the gas mass of order 106 M.
Our results are consistent with the model proposed for the compact flat spectrum radio source PKS 1549-79 by Tadhunter et al. (2001) in which the nucleus is cocooned in gas and dust in the early stages and drives outflows which will eventually hollow out the ionisation cones on either side of the nucleus (see figure 4).

Our estimates for the mass of emitting gas of order 106 M are also consistent with the radio source being young. Using the equations presented by O’Dea (1998) from de Young (1993), a smooth medium with the density we measure would require gas masses of order 108 M to 1010 M to frustrate the radio source - much larger than we estimate for the blue shifted components.

## Acknowledgements

JH acknowledges a PPARC PhD studentship. The William Herschel Telescope is operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias.

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# Orbital currents and cheap vortices in underdoped cuprates

## Abstract

In the past several years, we have developed a theory for the underdoped cuprates in collaboration with X.-G. Wen, based on an SU(2) formulation of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model. In this formulation, the staggered flux state plays a central role as the progenitor of the Néel state at half-filling and a close competitor to the $`d`$-wave superconductor with small doping where it is characterized by staggered orbital currents. We found support for this point of view when we discovered fluctuating orbital currents in the Gutzwiller projected BCS wavefunction. We shall argue that low-energy vortices, where the staggered flux state is stabilized in the core, are needed to explain many of the unusual properties of underdoped cuprates. Proposed experiments to look for these orbital currents will be discussed.

The phenomenon of high temperature superconductivity in cuprates is generally agreed to be associated with doping into a Mott insulator. The undoped material is an antiferromagnet with a large exchange energy $`J`$ of order 1500 K. The doped holes hop with a matrix element $`t`$, which is estimated to be approximately $`3J`$. However, the Néel state is not favorable for hole hopping, because after one hop the spin finds itself in a ferromagnetic environment. Thus it is clear that the physics is that of competition between the exchange energy $`J`$ and the hole kinetic energy per hole $`xt`$. Apparently the superconducting state emerges as the best compromise, but how and why this occurs is the central question of the high Tc puzzle. In the underdoped region this competition results in physical properties that are most anomalous. The metallic state above the superconducting Tc behaves in a way unlike anything we have encountered before. Essentially, an energy gap appears in some properties and not others, and this metallic state has been referred to as the pseudogap state. We will focus our attention on this region because the phenomenology is well established and we have the best chance of sorting out the fundamental physics. Indeed, I will argue that a consensus is emerging on the framework needed to describe this phenomenon and that detailed proposals are amenable to experimental tests.

The pseudogap phenomenon is most clearly seen in the uniform susceptibility. For example, Knight shift measurement in the YBCO 124 compound shows that while the spin susceptibility is almost temperature independent between 700 K and 300 K, as in an ordinary metal, it decreases below 300 K and by the time the Tc of 80 K is reached, the system has lost 80% of the spin susceptibility. Similarly, the linear $`T`$ coefficient of the specific heat shows a marked decrease below room temperature. It is apparent that the spins are forming into singlets and the spin entropy is gradually lost. On the other hand, the frequency dependent conductivity behaves very differently depending on whether the electric field is in the $`ab`$ plane $`(\sigma _{ab})`$ or perpendicular to it $`(\sigma _c)`$. At low frequencies (below 500 cm-1) $`(\sigma _{ab})`$ shows a typical Drude-like behavior for a metal with a width which decreases with temperature, but an area (spectral weight) which is independent of temperature. Thus there is no sign of the pseudogap in the spectral weight. This is surprising because in other examples where an energy gap appears in a metal, such as the onset of charge or spin density waves, there is a redistribution of the spectral weight from the Drude part to higher frequencies. On the other hand below 300 K $`\sigma _c(\omega )`$ is gradually reduced below 500 cm-1 and a deep hole is carved out of $`\sigma _c(\omega )`$ by the time Tc is reached. Finally, angle-resolved photoemission shows that an energy gap (in the form of a pulling back of the leading edge of the electronic spectrum from the Fermi energy) is observed near momentum $`(0,\pi )`$ and the onset of superconductivity is marked by the appearance of a small coherent peak at this gap edge.

The pseudogap phenomenology is well explained by a cartoon picture which emerges from the RVB (resonating valence band) theory of Anderson. The spins are paired into singlet pairs. However, the pairs are not static but are fluctuating due to quantum mechanical superposition, hence the term quantum spin liquid. The singlet formation explains the appearance of the spin gap and the reduction of spin entropy. The doped holes appear as vacancies in the background of singlet pair liquid and can carry a current without any energy gap. However in $`c`$-axis conductivity and electron is removed from one plane and placed on the next. The intermediate state is an electron which carries spin 1/2 and therefore it is necessary to break a singlet pair and pay the spin-gap energy. The same consideration applies to the photoemission experiment. Finally, according to RVB theory, superconductivity emerges when the holes become phase coherent. The spin singlet familiar in the BCS theory has already been formed.

While the above picture is appealing, there has been another popular explanation which at first sight sounds less exotic. The idea is that the pseudogap phenomenology can be understood as a superconductor with robust amplitude but strong phase fluctuation. The superfluid density $`\rho _s`$ which controls the phase stiffness is proportional to the doping concentration $`x`$ and becomes small in the underdoped region. As emphasized by Uemura and by Emery and Kivelson, Tc is controlled by $`\rho _s`$ and is much lower than the energy gap. We shall now argue that these two points of views are not unrelated to each other. Setting aside the question of where the strong pairing amplitude comes from in the first place, that the phase fluctuation scenairo is incomplete can be seen from the following argument. In two dimensions the destruction of superconducting order is via the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) theory of vortex unbinding. Above Tc the number of vortices proliferate and the normal metallic state is reached only when the vortex density is so high that the cores overlap. (There is considerable lattitude in specifying the core radius, but this does not affect the conclusion.) At lower vortex density, transport properties will resemble a superconductor in the flux flow regime. In ordinary superconductors, the BKT temperature is close to the mean field temperature, and the core energy rapidly becomes small. However, in the present case, it is postulated that the mean field temperature is high, so that a large core energy is expected. Indeed, in a conventional core the order parameter and energy gap vanish, costing $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2/E_F`$ per unit area of energy. Using a core radius of $`\xi =V_F/\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, the core energy of a conventional superconductor is $`E_F`$. In our case, we may replace $`E_F`$ by $`J`$. If this were the case, the proliferation of vortices would not happen until a high temperature $`J`$ independent of $`x`$ is reached. Thus for the phase fluctuation scenario to to work, it is essential to have “cheap” vortices, with energy cost of order Tc. Then the essential problem is to understand what the vortex core is made of. Put another way, there has to be a competing state with energy very close to the $`d`$-wave superconductors which constitute the core. The vortex core indeed offers a glimpse of the normal state reached when $`H`$ exceeds $`H_{c2}`$, and is an important constituent of the pseudogap state above Tc.

To summarize, the pseudogap phenomenology is so clearly defined by experiments that I believe a broad consensus on the theoretical framework is emerging. The following points are common to a number of investigators.

1. The key issue is how holes are accommodated in a doped Mott insulator.
2. The superconducting state is characterized by a large energy gap and a small $`\rho _s`$. The transition temperature is controlled by phase coherence.
3. The superconducting state does not evolve out of a normal state with well defined quasiparticles. Therefore the question of pairing mechanisms in the traditional sense of identifying the boson being exchanged between quasiparticles is not the right question.
4. What is needed is to identify the competing state which lives iside the vortex core.

What are the candidates for the competing order? A candidate which has attracted a lot of attention is the stripe phase. In the LSCO familty, dynamical stripes (spin density waves) are clearly important, especially near $`x=\frac{1}{8}`$. There are recent report of incommensurate SDW nucleating around vortices. However, until now there has been little evidence for stripes outside of the LSCO family. On the theoretical side, as a competing state it is not clear how the stripes are connected to $`d`$-wave superconductivity and it is hard to understand how the nodal quasiparticles turn out to be most sharply defined on the Fermi surface, since these have to transverse the stripes at a $`45^{}`$ angle.

A second candidate for the vortex core is the antiferromagnetic state. This possibility was first proposed several years ago in the context of the SO(5) theory. This theory is phenomenological in that it involves only bosonic degrees of freedom (the SDW and pairing order parameters). The quasiparticles are out of the picture and indeed this theory applies equally well to $`d`$-wave or a fully gapped $`s`$-wave superconductor. Thus the fundamental question of how the holes are accommodated has not really been addressed. The nucleation of SDW around the core in the LSCO family lends support to the existence of antiferrmagnetic order inside the core. Furthermore, there are reports of enhanced antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations, and perhaps even static order, using NMR. I shall argue next that other considerations also lead to antiferromagnetic fluctuations and possibly static orders inside the vortex core, so that the observation of antiferromagnetic cores does not necessarily imply the existence of SO(5) symmetry.

Finally, I come to the candidate which we favor — the staggered flux state with orbital currents. Indeed, Lee and Wen have successfully constructed a “cheap” vortex state. The staggered flux phase has an advantage over other possibilities in that its excitation spectrum is similar to the $`d`$-wave superconductor and the SU(2) theory allows us to smoothly connect it to the superconductivity. We also regard the staggered flux phase as the precursor to Néel order, so that antiferromagnetic fluctuations or even SDW order are accommodated naturally. Of course, it is experiments which have the final say as to which candidate turns out to be realized. Our strategy is to work out as many experimental consequences as we can and propose experiments to confirm or falsify our theory.

The staggered flux state was first introduced as a mean field solution at half-filling and later was extended to include finite doping. At half-filliing, due to the constraint of no double occupation, the staggered flux state corresponds to an insulating state with power law decay in the spin correlation function. It is known that upon including gauge fluctuations which enforce the constraint, the phenomenon of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking occurs, which directly corresponds to Néel ordering. The idea is that with doping, confinement is suppressed at some intermediate energy scale, and the state can be understood as fluctuating between the staggered flux state and the $`d`$-wave superconducting state. Finally, when the holes become phase coherent, the $`d`$-wave superconducting state is the stable ground state. Thus the staggered flux state may be regarded as the “mother state” which is an unstable fixed point due to gauge fluctuations. It flows to Néel ordering at half-filling and to the $`d`$-wave superconductor for sufficiently large $`x`$. Thus the staggered flux state plays a central role in this kind of theory. We should point out that the staggered flux state (called the $`D`$-density wave state) has recently been proposed as the ordered state in the pseudogap region. As explained elsewhere, we think that this view is not supported by experiment and we continue to favor the fluctuation picture.

The above picture finds support from studies of projected wavefunctions, where the no-double-occupation constraint is enforced by hand on a computer. With doping the best state is a projected $`d`$-wave state. Recently we calculated the current-current correlation function of this state $`c_j(k,\mathrm{})=<j(k)j(\mathrm{})>`$ where $`j(k)`$ is the physical electron current on the bond $`k`$. The average current $`<j(k)>`$ is obviously zero, but the correlator exhibits a staggered circulating pattern. Such a pattern is absent in the $`d`$-wave BCS state before projection, and is a result of the Gutzwiller projection. Our result for $`c_j`$ is consistent with exact diagonalization of two holes in 32 sites.

The staggered current generates a staggered physical magnetic field (estimated to be 10–40 gauss) which may be detected, in principle, by neutron scattering. In practice the small signal makes this a difficult, though not impossible experiment and we are motivated to look for situations where the orbital current may become static or quasi-static. Recently, we analyzed the structure of the $`hc/2e`$ vortex in the superconducting state within the SU(2) theory and concluded that in the vicinity of the vortex core, the orbital current becomes quasi-static, with a time scale determined by the tunnelling between two degenerate staggered flux states. It is very likely that this time is long on the neutron time scale. Thus we propose that a quasi-static peak centered around $`(\pi ,\pi )`$ will appear in neutron scattering in a magnetic field, with intensity proportional to the number of vortices. The time scale may actually be long enough for the small magnetic fields generated by the orbital currents to be detectable by $`\mu `$-SR or Yttrium NMR. Again, the signal should be proportional to the external fields. (The NMR experiment must be carried out in 2–4–7 or 3 layer samples to avoid the cancellation between bi-layers.) We have also computed the tunnelling density of states in the vicinity of the vortex core, and predicted a rather specific kind of period doubling which should be detectable by atomic resolution STM. The recent report of a static field of $`\pm 18`$ gauss in underdoped YBCO which appears in the vortex state is promising, even though muon cannot distinguish between orbital current or spin as the origin of the magnetic field. We remark that in the underdoped antiferromagnet, the local moment gives rise to a field of 340 gauss at the muon site. Thus if the 18 gauss signal is due to spin, it will correspond to roughly $`1/20`$th of the full moment.

We remark that our analytic model of the vortex core is in full agreement with the numerical solution of unrestricted mean field $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}`$ and $`\chi _{ij}`$ by Wang, Han and Lee. Recently we found that for small doping in the $`t`$-$`J`$ model a small moment SDW co-exists with orbital currents in the vortex core. More generally, we expect $`(\pi ,\pi )`$ spin fluctuations to be enhanced  so that the tendency to antiferromagnetism is fully compatible with the staggered flux picture. This vortex solution is also interesting in that the tunnelling density of states show a gap, with no sign of the large resonance associated with Caroli-deGennes-type core levels found in the standard BCS model of the vortex. There exists a single bound state at low lying energy, in agreement with STM experiments. The low density of states inside the vortex core has an important implication. In the standard Bardeen-Stephen model of flux-flow resistivity, the friction coefficient of a moving vortex is due to dissipation associated with the vortex core states. Now that the core states are absent, we can expect anomalously small friction coefficients for underdoped cuprates. The vortex moves fast transverse to the current and gives rise to large flux-flow resistivity. Since the total conductivity is the sum of the flux-flow conductivity and the quasiparticle conductivity, it is possible to get into a situation where the quasiparticle conductivity dominates even for H $``$ Hc2. Thus the “cheap” and “fast” vortex opens the possibility of having vortex states above the nominal Tc and Hc2, when the resistivity looks like that of a metal, with little sign of flux-flow contribution. From this point of view, the large Nerst effect observed by Ong and co-workers  over a large region in the H-T plane above the nominal Tc and Hc2 (as determined by resistivity) may be qualitatively explained.

Finally, I would like to mention my recent work with N. Nagaosa on new collective modes in the superconductor state.  In ordinary superconductors, there is a single pairing order parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and associated with it are the amplitude mode and the phase modes. In our theory the hopping matrix element $`\chi _{ij}`$ is also a dynamical degree of freedom. The basic reason is that the hole hopping amplitude depends sensitively on the spin configuration, as we explained earlier, so that $`\chi _{ij}`$ encodes the effect due to the spin degree of freedom. With the pairing and hopping amplitudes as dynamic degrees of freedom, it is natural that we can expect new collective modes. These can be evaluated in a direct way within mean field theory in analogy with the standard RPA treatment, but the SU(2) theory allows us to classify them. We find two new classes of collective modes. The first is called the $`\theta `$-mode, which describes the local fluctuation towards the staggered flux phase, and has the effect of generating the orbital current correlation described earlier. The second is called the $`\varphi `$-gauge mode. This mode involves the relative oscillation of the amplitudes of $`\chi _{ij}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}`$ in such a way that $`|\chi _{ij}|^2+|\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}|^2`$ is constant, and this oscillation is modulation in a staggered way. Thus this mode is most important near $`(\pi ,\pi )`$, but it disperses throughout $`k`$ space in a way which we have computed. The frequency of the mode is estimated to be of order $`J`$ for $`x=0.15`$. This mode couples to Raman scattering in the standard way so that optical Raman scattering may observe the mode at $`\text{k}=0`$. X-Ray Raman scattering should be able to map out the entire dispersion, but higher energy resolution than what is currently available will be needed. It turns out the LSCO offers a special opportunity to couple to this mode. In the LTO phase the copper oxygen bonds are buckled in a staggered way. A uniform motion of the oxygen along the $`c`$-axis leads to a staggered modulation of the hopping matrix element. Thus we predict that a new collective mode at $`(\pi ,\pi )`$ will show up as a side band of the buckling mode in $`c`$-axis conductivity. Unfortunately, the relative spectral weight of one side band is estimated to be very small (of order $`5\times 10^3`$), making its detection a challenging one for experimentalists.

I thank X.-G. Wen, N. Nagaosa, D. Ivanov, J. Kishine and Y. Morita for their collaboration on the work reviewed here. I acknowledge the support of NSF through the MRSEC program grant no. DMR98–08941.


text:
# The Colour Glass Condensate

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Understanding the high-energy behaviour of hadronic cross-sections is a most intriguing and fascinating problem, which is intimately related to the physics of high parton densities. Linear evolution equations in QCD, like DGLAP and BFKL, predict a rapid growth of the parton densities, which violates unitarity constraints. This is the “small–$`x`$ problem”111As usual, $`x`$ denotes the fraction of the hadron longitudinal momentum carried by a typical parton involved in the scattering: $`xQ^2/s`$, with $`Q^2`$ a typical transferred momentum. Thus, the high energy limit ($`s\mathrm{}`$ at fixed $`Q^2`$) is the same as the small–$`x`$ limit. of perturbative QCD. But the applicability of perturbation theory to high-energy problems is by no means obvious. Indeed, even when $`s\mathrm{}`$ (with $`s`$ the total energy squared in the center of mass frame), there is a priori no guarantee that all the transferred momenta are large. The “infrared diffusion” problem of the BFKL equation  (see Sect. 2.1 below) provides an explicit counterexample in this respect.

But this does not prove the inadequacy of perturbation theory in general. In fact, the strong rise of the parton densities carries in itself the potential for its own solution : The interactions between the partons from different parton cascades, omitted in the linear evolution equations, will become more and more important with increasing energy, and may eventually tame the growth of the parton densities. This parton saturation phenomenon is expected to introduce a characteristic momentum scale, the saturation momentum $`Q_s(x,A)`$, which is a measure of the density of the saturated gluons, and grows rapidly with $`1/x`$ and $`A`$ (the atomic number). Thus, for sufficiently high energies and/or very large nuclei, gluon saturation provides an intrinsic hard momentum scale which limits the “infrared diffusion” and justifies the use of weak coupling methods: $`\alpha _s(Q_s)1`$.

Note, however, that although the coupling is weak, the saturation regime remains non-perturbative in that the non-linear effects associated with the high parton densities cannot be expanded out in some perturbative scheme, but must be included exactly. This is a priori a formidable task, but progress can be made by recognizing that this is a semi-classical regime, for which a classical effective theory can be written . This is a theory for the hadron wavefunction in the infinite momentum frame, and it looks remarkably simple: It is just classical Yang-Mills theory in the presence of a random distribution of colour charges which propagate nearly at the speed of light, and whose internal dynamics is “frozen” by Lorentz time dilation. The classical gauge fields represent the “small–$`x`$ gluons”, i.e., the gluons with small longitudinal momenta, which are the relevant degrees of freedom for high-energy scattering. The fast moving charges represent the partons with relatively high longitudinal momenta, like the valence quarks, which are not directly involved in the scattering, but act as sources for the small–$`x`$ gluons. At saturation, the colour fields are strong, and the classical theory must be solved exactly.

Originally, this theory has been formulated as a model to study saturation effects in a large nucleus ($`A1`$) at not so high energies . In that case, the gluon density is high because of the presence of many colour sources (the $`A\times N_c`$ valence quarks) already at “tree-level”. Subsequently, it has been shown that this effective theory is consistent with the QCD evolution towards higher energies : The evolution modifies the classical colour source by incorporating the quantum gluons with longitudinal momenta above the small–$`x`$ scale of interest. This involves a renormalization group equation which can be seen as a functional non-linear generalization of the BFKL equation (see Sect. 3 below).

We have dubbed the gluonic matter described by this effective theory a Colour Glass Condensate (CGC) :

* Colour ” since gluons are “coloured” under SU(3).
* Glass ” because of the analogy with the mathematical description of systems with frozen disorder, called “glasses”. Here, the “frozen disorder” refers to the random distribution of time-independent colour charges, which is averaged over in the calculation of physical observables.
* Condensate ” since, at saturation, the gluon modes have large occupation numbers, of order $`1/\alpha _s`$ (corresponding to strong classical fields $`A1/g`$), which is the maximal value allowed by the repulsive gluon interactions. This is a Bose condensate.

It is my purpose in this talk to review the physical and mathematical foundations of the CGC picture, and describe some of its consequences for gluon saturation , geometric scaling in deep inelastic scattering , and the unitarization of hadronic cross-sections . I will also discuss “limiting fragmentation” as an incentive towards the renormalization group description of multiparticle production in heavy ion collisions. Other consequences and recent applications to the phenomenology of deep inelastic scattering and heavy ion collisions will be briefly mentioned towards the end. More detailed discussions can be found in specialized contributions to these proceedings .

## 2 FROM BFKL TO GLUON SATURATION

Consider deep inelastic scattering, for simplicity. We are interested in the high-energy, or small–$`x`$, limit, with $`xQ^2/s1`$. It is convenient to regard this process in a special frame (the dipole frame) in which most of the total energy is carried by the hadron, while the virtual photon $`\gamma ^{}`$ has just enough energy to dissociate before scattering into a quark–antiquark pair (a colour dipole), which then scatters off the gluon fields in the hadron. (See Fig. 1.) In this frame, the DIS cross-section can be related to the dipole-hadron scattering amplitude $`𝒩_\tau (r_{})`$ , which to lowest order (two gluon exchange) is in turn proportional to the gluon distribution in the hadron wavefunction:

$`𝒩_\tau (r_{})r_{}^2{\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2\alpha _sC_F}{N_c^21}}{\displaystyle \frac{xG(x,1/r_{}^2)}{\pi R^2}}.`$ (2.1)
Here, $`r_{}=x_{}y_{}`$ is the transverse size of the dipole (with the quark at $`x_{}`$ and the antiquark at $`y_{}`$), $`\tau \mathrm{ln}(1/x)`$ is the rapidity gap between $`\gamma ^{}`$ and the hadron (which is almost the same as the hadron rapidity in the considered frame), and $`xG(x,Q^2)/\pi R^2`$ is the number of gluons with longitudinal momentum fraction $`x`$ and transverse size $`r_{}=1/Q`$ per unit rapidity per unit transverse area. Throughout, I assume that the dipole is sufficiently small to be perturbative: $`Q^21/r_{}^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2`$.

In writing eq. (2.1), I assumed the hadron to be homogeneous in the transverse plane; that is, the gluon density was taken to be the same at all the impact parameters within the hadron disk of radius $`R`$. (A more realistic impact parameter dependence will be considered in Sect. 7.) Note that the scattering amplitude (2.1) is not sensitive to the details of the longitudinal distribution of gluons inside the hadron, but only to their projected distribution in the transverse plane. Physically, it is so since the low-energy virtual photon has a large longitudinal wavelength $`1/x`$, so it scatters coherently off all the partons in a longitudinal tube of transverse size $`r_{}`$.

The $`F_2`$ data at HERA show a rapid growth of the gluon distribution with $`1/x`$, in qualitative agreement with the predictions of perturbative QCD to which I now turn.

### 2.1 The small–$`x`$ problem of the BFKL approximation

Within perturbative QCD, the enhancement of the gluon distribution at small $`x`$ proceeds via the gluon cascades depicted in Fig. 2. Fig. 2.a shows the direct emission of a soft gluon with longitudinal momentum222I use light-cone vector notations: $`k^\pm =(k^0\pm k^3)/\sqrt{2}`$, $`k_{}=(k^1,k^2)`$. The total 4-momentum of the hadron reads $`P^\mu =\delta ^{\mu +}P^+`$ with large $`P^+`$. $`k^+=xP^+P^+`$ by a fast moving parton (say, a valence quark) with $`p^+=x_0P^+`$ and $`1>x_0x`$. Fig. 2.b displays the lowest-order radiative correction which is of the order (with $`N_c`$ the number of colours, and $`\overline{\alpha }_s\alpha _sN_c/\pi `$)

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _sN_c}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _{k^+}^{p^+}}{\displaystyle \frac{dp_1^+}{p_1^+}}={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _sN_c}{\pi }}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{p^+}{k^+}}=\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{x_0}{x}}`$ (2.2)
relative to the tree-level process in Fig. 2.a. This correction is enhanced by the large rapidity interval $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau =\mathrm{ln}(x_0/x)`$ available for the emission of the additional gluon. A similar enhancement holds for the gluon cascade in Fig. 2.c, in which the succesive gluons are strongly ordered in longitudinal momenta: $`p^+p_1^+p_2^+\mathrm{}p_n^+k^+`$. This gives a contribution of relative order $`\frac{1}{n!}\left(\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{ln}\frac{x_0}{x}\right)^n.`$ Clearly, when $`x`$ is so small that $`\mathrm{ln}(x_0/x)1/\overline{\alpha }_s`$, all such quantum “corrections” become of order one, and must be resummed for consistency. This gives the number of gluons with longitudinal momentum fraction $`x`$ (or rapidity $`\tau =\mathrm{ln}(1/x)`$) within this “leading-log” approximation:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dN}{d\tau }}xG(x,Q^2)\mathrm{e}^{\omega \overline{\alpha }_s\tau }=x^{\omega \overline{\alpha }_s},`$ (2.3)
with $`\omega `$ a pure number. We have tacitly assumed that all the gluons in the cascade have transverse momenta of the same order, namely of order $`Q`$. A more refined treatment, based on the BFKL equation , allows one to compute $`\omega `$ and specifies the $`Q^2`$–dependence of the distribution. One obtains:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{xG(x,Q^2)}{\pi R^2}}|_{BFKL}\sqrt{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2Q^2}\mathrm{exp}\left\{\omega \overline{\alpha }_s\tau {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\beta \overline{\alpha }_s\tau }}\left(\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}\right)^2\right\},`$ (2.4)
where $`\omega =4\mathrm{ln}22.77`$, $`\beta =28\zeta (3)33.67`$, and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is a reference scale, of order $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$. Eq. (2.4) exhibits two essential features of the gluon distribution in the BFKL approximation: (a) its exponential increases with $`\tau `$, and (b) its diffusive behaviour in $`\mathrm{ln}(Q^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)`$, with diffusion “time” equal to $`\tau `$. These features are responsible for the main difficulties of this approximation in the high energy limit :

(a) Violation of the unitarity bound : At high energy, hadronic cross-sections are proportional to the gluon distribution (see, e.g., eq. (2.1)). Then, eq. (2.4) predicts $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}(s)s^{\omega \overline{\alpha }_s}`$, which violates the Froissart bound $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}(s)\sigma _0\mathrm{ln}^2s`$ .

(b) Infrared diffusion : With increasing $`s`$, the typical transverse momenta carried by the gluons within the BFKL ladder diffuse into the non-perturbative region at $`Q^2<\mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$. This contradicts the use of perturbation theory.

### 2.2 The saturation momentum

When resumming the ladder diagrams as above, we have assumed that the emitted gluons propagate freely, that is, we have neglected their interactions with gluons at the same rapidity from other cascades (cf. Fig. 3). Such interactions are not enhanced by a large logarithm, but may nevertheless become important when the density of the available gluons is large enough.

Specifically, the interaction probability for gluons from different parton cascades can be estimated as:

$`\sigma (Q^2)\times n(x,Q^2){\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _sN_c}{Q^2}}\times {\displaystyle \frac{1}{N_c^21}}{\displaystyle \frac{xG(x,Q^2)}{\pi R^2}}`$ (2.5)
where $`\sigma (Q^2)`$ is a typical cross-section for gluons with transverse size $`1/Q`$, and $`n(x,Q^2)`$ is the density of the gluons of a given colour, and with given $`x`$ and $`1/Q`$, in the transverse plane. This probability becomes of order one for $`Q^2`$ lower than a critical value :

$`Q_s^2(\tau ){\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _sN_c}{N_c^21}}{\displaystyle \frac{xG(x,Q_s^2)}{\pi R^2}},`$ (2.6)
that we shall refer to as the saturation momentum. More precisely, this is the scale at which non-linear effects start to be important in the hadron wavefunction:

For $`Q^2Q_s^2(\tau )`$, the non-linear effects are negligible, and linear evolution equations (like BFKL or DGLAP) apply. In particular, one can estimate the saturation scale by inserting the BFKL approximation (2.4) into eq. (2.6). This gives  :

$`Q_s^2(\tau )=\mathrm{\Lambda }^2\mathrm{e}^{c\overline{\alpha }_s\tau },c=\left[\beta +\sqrt{\beta (\beta +8\omega )}\right]/2=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4.84}\mathrm{}`$ (2.7)
For $`Q^2<Q_s^2(\tau )`$, the non-linear effects are essential, and are expected to tame the growth of the gluon distribution with $`\tau `$. It has been predicted almost twenty years ago  that a “saturation” regime should be reached in which recombination equilibrates radiation (see also Refs. ). To verify this conjecture, a formalism is needed to perform calculations in the non-linear regime. This will be described in Sect. 3.

For a nucleus, $`xG_A(x,Q_s^2)A`$ and $`\pi R_A^2A^{2/3}`$, so eq. (2.6) predicts $`Q_s^2A^{1/3}`$. To summarize (with $`\delta 1/3`$ and $`\lambda c\overline{\alpha }_s`$ in a first approximation) :

$`Q_s^2(x,A)A^\delta x^\lambda ,`$ (2.8)
which shows that an efficient way to create a high-density environment is to combine large nucleai with moderately small values of $`x`$, as currently done at RHIC. Schematically:

$`ep`$ at HERA $``$ heavy ions at RHIC

$`eA`$ at eRHIC $``$ heavy ions at LHC

Eq. (2.8) also shows that the saturation momentum becomes a hard scale ($`Q_s^2(x,A)\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2`$) for sufficiently large nuclei and/or large enough energies. Once this condition is satisfied, we can reliably use weak coupling techniques to study the evolution towards even higher energies. This strongly suggests that the high energy limit of QCD should be within the reach of perturbation theory.

### 2.3 Saturation vs. Unitarization

Since unitarity violations by the BFKL approximation are related to the unlimited growth of the gluon distribution, we expect that, converserly, saturation effects should restore unitarity for hadronic cross-sections at high energies. Consider, e.g., the dipole-hadron scattering amplitude, for which the unitarity bound reads $`𝒩_\tau (r_{})1`$. (The upper limit $`𝒩_\tau (r_{})=1`$ corresponds to “blacknesss”: the dipole is completely absorbed.) Of course, BFKL violates this bound for high enough energies. But a brief inspection of eqs. (2.1) and (2.6) reveals that the unitarity violations show up precisely at the scale at which BFKL is expected to break down because of non-linear effects:

$`𝒩_\tau (r_{})\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\mathrm{for}r_{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}/Q_s(\tau ).`$ (2.9)
This suggests that unitarization effects and saturation are different aspects of the same non-linear physics, and cannot be dissociated from each other. We shall see below that, indeed, the non-linear effects responsible for saturation cure the unitarity problem as well.

## 3 THE EFFECTIVE THEORY FOR THE CGC

According to eq. (2.6), the gluon distribution is large at saturation: $`xG(x,Q^2)1/\alpha _s`$ for $`Q^2<Q_s^2(\tau )`$, which suggests the use of semi-classical methods. One can write a classical effective theory whose general structure is fixed by the kinematics of the infinite momentum frame : The “fast partons” move nearly at the speed of light in the positive $`z`$ (or positive $`x^+`$) direction, and generate a colour current $`J_a^\mu =\delta ^{\mu +}\rho _a`$. By Lorentz contraction, the support of the charge density $`\rho _a`$ is concentrated near $`z=t`$, or $`x^{}=0`$. By Lorentz time dilation, $`\rho _a`$ is independent of the light-cone time $`x^+`$.

The classical equation of motion (EOM) reads therefore:

$`(D_\nu F^{\nu \mu })_a(x)=\delta ^{\mu +}\rho _a(x^{},x_{}).`$ (3.1)
Physical observables are obtained by averaging the solution to this equation over all the configurations of $`\rho `$, with a gauge-invariant weight function $`W_\tau [\rho ]`$ which depends upon the dynamics of the fast modes. For instance, the dipole-hadron scattering amplitude is computed as (in the eikonal approximation ) :

$`𝒩_\tau (x_{},y_{})`$ $`=`$ $`1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N_c}}\mathrm{tr}\left(V^{}(x_{})V(y_{})\right)_\tau ,`$
$`\mathrm{tr}\left(V^{}(x_{})V(y_{})\right)_\tau `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle D\rho W_\tau [\rho ]\mathrm{tr}\left(V_x_{}^{}[\rho ]V_y_{}[\rho ]\right)},`$ (3.2)
where $`V^{}(x_{})`$ and $`V(y_{})`$ are Wilson lines describing the interactions between the fast moving quark, or antiquark, from the dipole and the colour field in the hadron:

$`V^{}(x_{})\mathrm{P}\mathrm{exp}\left\{ig{\displaystyle 𝑑x^{}A_a^+(x^{},x_{})T^a}\right\},`$ (3.3)
and $`A^+[\rho ]`$ is the solution to the EOM (3.1) in the covariant gauge: $`_{}^2A^+=\rho `$. The average over $`\rho `$ in eq. (3) is similar to that performed for a spin glass .

As already mentioned, this “glassy” description is an effective theory, that is, it holds for a given (small) value of $`x`$, i.e., for a given longitudinal momentum $`k^+=xP^+P^+`$. The source $`\rho _a`$ is the colour charge density of the “fast partons” (the valence quarks and the gluons with momenta $`p^+k^+`$ in the parton cascades in Fig. 2). The classical solution $`A[\rho ]`$ represents the last gluon (with momentum $`k^+`$) in these cascades. The non-linear effects in the classical EOM describe gluon recombination at the soft scale $`k^+`$ (see Fig. 3). The corresponding effects at momenta $`p^+k^+`$ are included in the definition of $`\rho `$, that is, in the weight function $`W_\tau [\rho ]`$.

All the dependence upon the separation scale $`k^+=xP^+`$ is carried by the weight function (via $`\tau \mathrm{ln}(1/x)`$) : When $`x`$ is further decreased, say to $`x_1<x`$, new quantum modes are effectively “frozen” (those with longitudinal momenta $`x_1P^+<p^+<xP^+`$), and must be included in the effective source at the lower scale $`x_1P^+`$. This can be done via a one-loop background field calculation, and leads to a renormalization group equation for $`W_\tau [\rho ]`$ which shows how the correlations of $`\rho `$ change with increasing $`\tau `$ . Schematically:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{W_\tau [\rho ]}{\tau }}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle _{x_{},y_{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{\delta \rho _\tau ^a(x_{})}}\chi _{ab}(x_{},y_{})[\rho ]{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{\delta \rho _\tau ^b(y_{})}}W_\tau [\rho ],`$ (3.4)
which describes diffusion in the functional space spanned by $`\rho _a(x^{},x_{})`$ . The kernel $`\chi [\rho ]`$, which plays the role of the “diffusion coefficient”, is positive definite and non-linear in $`\rho `$ to all orders (see Refs.  for an explicit expression and more details).

Eq. (3.4) resums both the large energy logarithms, i.e., the terms $`(\alpha _s\mathrm{ln}1/x)^n`$, and the leading high density effects, i.e., the non-linear effects which become of order one at saturation. Approximate solutions to this equation have been obtained in Ref. , and will be described in Sect. 5 below. An exact, but formal, solution in the form of a path-integral has been constructed in Ref. , where the stochastic nature of this equation has been fully elucidated, and the equivalent Langevin equation (describing a random walk on a group manifold) has been written down. Both the path-integral and the Langevin formulation are well suited for numerical simulations on a lattice .

Eq. (3.4) is a functional equation, but can be transformed into ordinary evolution equations for the physical observables of interest. For instance, by taking a derivative w.r.t. $`\tau `$ in eq. (3), and using eq. (3.4) for $`W_\tau /\tau `$, one can obtain an equation for the evolution of the scattering amplitude with $`\tau `$ . Note, however, that in general this is not a closed equation (the 2-point function of the Wilson lines is coupled to a 4-point function), but only the first step in an infinite hierarchy of coupled equations. A closed equation for $`𝒩_\tau (x_{},y_{})`$ can be nevertheless obtained in the large–$`N_c`$ limit. This is known as the Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK) equation , and reads schematically333A similar non-linear equation was originally suggested in Ref.  and proved in  in the double-log approximation. More recently, Braun has reobtained this equation by resumming “fan” diagrams .:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{𝒩_\tau }{\tau }}=\overline{\alpha }_sK_{BFKL}𝒩_\tau \overline{\alpha }_s𝒩_\tau 𝒩_\tau ,`$ (3.5)
that is, in addition to the linear BFKL terms, it contains also a quadratic term which enforces unitarization (see Sect. 7).

So far, the picture of the quantum evolution has been developed fully in the hadron infinite momentum frame: In the language of Fig. 1, the dipole rapidity has been kept fixed, while the hadron has been accelerated to higher and higher energies, with the result that the hadronic wavefunction (described here as a CGC) evolves according to eq. (3.4). Alternatively, via a change the frame, one could use the increase in the total energy to accelerate the dipole, and study the evolution of its wavefunction with $`\tau `$. In the language of eq. (3), this would correspond to keeping unchanged the weight function $`W_{\tau _0}[\rho ]`$ ($`\tau _0`$ is the rapidity of the hadron which is now fixed), but modifying the scattering operator to allow for additional gluons in the (evolved) dipole wavefunction. Since physics is boost invariant, both descriptions should lead to the same evolution equations for physical observables like $`𝒩_\tau (x_{},y_{})`$. And, indeed, the evolution equations for Wilson line correlators derived from the CGC  (in particular, eq. (3.5)) are identical to the equations originally obtained by Balitsky  and Kovchegov  from studies of the dipole evolution. It has been first recognized by Weigert  that Balitsky’s hierarchy of coupled equations can be compactly summarized into a single functional equation, which is essentially equivalent to eq. (3.4). More recently, (See Ref.  for a comparison between the two approaches.)

## 4 LIMITING FRAGMENTATION

The renormalization group description presented above is based on the separation of scales in rapidity ($`\mathrm{ln}1/x`$) for the degrees of freedom in the hadron wavefunction. This way to formulate the problem is certainly useful for DIS, where one can tune the kinematics to observe partons with a given value of $`x`$. Here, I would like to give you an example which shows that the same strategy can be also useful for hadron–hadron collisions, where partons with all values of $`x`$ are a priori involved in the scattering.

Consider multiparticle production in, say, heavy ion collisions at RHIC. A typical rapidity distribution of the particles emerging from such a collision is shown in Fig. 4. The leading particles are shown by the solid line and are clustered around the projectile and target rapidities. The dashed line is the distribution of the produced particles. Remarkably, this latter appears to reflect the rapidity distribution of the partons in the colliding hadron wavefunctions. In particular, it preserves the separation of scales in rapidity.

The most striking evidence in this sense comes from the feature of the data known as “limiting fragmentation” : When plotted as functions of $`yy_{proj}`$, the rapidity distributions measured at RHIC at different energies are to a good approximation independent of energy (see Fig. 5; the final version of these data, including the run at 19.6 GeV, is by now available in Ref. ). The meaning of this becomes clearer if one notices that $`y_{proj}y\mathrm{ln}(1/x)`$, with $`x`$ the longitudinal momentum fraction of the produced particle. Then, Fig. 5 shows that, with increasing energy, the “fast” (large $`x`$) degrees of freedom do not change much, while new degrees of freedom appear at smaller values of $`x`$. In other terms, the rapidity distributions of the produced particles are functions of $`x`$ alone, and not of the total energy: This is similar to the Bjorken scaling of the parton distributions, and is naturally explained by assuming that hadron interactions are short-ranged in rapidity, so that the hadron distributions in rapidity reproduce the corresponding distributions of the liberated partons.

## 5 GLUON SATURATION

In order to solve the RGE (3.4), one needs an initial condition at low energy (say, at $`x_010^1\mathrm{}10^2`$). For a large nucleus, at least, it is reasonable to assume that the only colour charges at such a large $`x`$ are the valence quarks, which moreover are not correlated with each other, because they typically belong to different nucleons . Then, the initial weight function $`W_{\tau _0}[\rho ]`$ is simply a gaussian, with 2-point function

$`\rho _a(x_{})\rho _b(y_{})_0=\delta _{ab}\delta ^{(2)}(x_{}y_{})\mu _0,\mu _0\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\alpha _sA/R_A^2,`$ (5.1)
which measures the colour charge density of the valence quarks in the transverse plane.

When increasing $`\tau `$, the quantum evolution will modify this simple initial condition by introducing correlations and non-linearities (that is, in general the evolved weight function will not be a gaussian any longer ). The details of the evolution depend upon the structure of the kernel $`\chi `$ in eq. (3.4). For the present purposes, it suffices to say that $`\chi `$ depends upon $`\rho `$ via the Wilson line (3.3). This allows for an intuitive distinction between the high-density and low-density regimes  :

— At low energy, or large transverse momenta $`k_{}^2Q_s^2(\tau )`$, we are in a dilute regime where fields and sources are weak, and the Wilson lines can be expanded to lowest order: $`V^{}(x_{})1+ig𝑑x^{}A^+(x^{},x_{})`$. Then, eq. (3.4) reduces to the BFKL equation for the 2-point function $`\rho (k_{})\rho (k_{})_\tau \mu _\tau (k_{})`$ , with solution (cf. eq. (2.4)) :

$`\mu _\tau (k_{})\sqrt{\mu _0k_{}^2}\mathrm{e}^{\omega \overline{\alpha }_s\tau }.`$ (5.2)
As compared to eq. (5.1), we note the emergence of transverse correlations, as well the rapid, exponential, increase with $`\tau `$.

— At high energies, or low momenta $`k_{}^2<Q_s^2(\tau )`$, the colour fields are strong, $`A^+1/g`$, so the Wilson lines rapidly oscillate and average away to zero: $`VV^{}0`$. Then the kernel $`\chi `$ becomes independent of $`\rho `$, and the r.h.s. of eq. (3.4) simplifies drastically  :

$`{\displaystyle \frac{W_\tau [\rho ]}{\tau }}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _k_{}}k_{}^2{\displaystyle \frac{\delta ^2}{\delta \rho _a(k_{})\delta \rho _a(k_{})}}W_\tau [\rho ].`$ (5.3)
This is the standard diffusion equation for the Brownian motion. The corresponding 2-point function increases only linearly with the evolution “time” $`\tau `$  :

$`\mu _\tau (k_{})=\left(\tau \overline{\tau }(k_{})\right){\displaystyle \frac{k_{}^2}{\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{k_{}^2}{\pi c\overline{\alpha }_s}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q_s^2(\tau )}{k_{}^2}},`$ (5.4)
that is, logarithmically with the energy, since $`\tau \mathrm{ln}s`$. (In writing eq. (5.4), I have also used eq. (2.7) for the saturation scale). For most purposes, a logarithm is as good as a constant. We conclude that, at low momenta $`k_{}Q_s(\tau )`$, the colour sources saturate, because of the non-linear effects in the quantum evolution.

A second important feature of eq. (5.4) is that it vanishes like $`k_{}^2`$ when $`k_{}^20`$. This means that the saturated gluons screen each other in such a way that colour neutrality is achieved over a typical transverse area $`1/Q_s^2(\tau )`$. This has important consequences for the infrared behaviour of the perturbation theory, and also for the unitarization of cross-sections at high energy  (see Sect. 7 below).

Gluon saturation can be seen also in the gluon distribution at low $`k_{}`$ . Let

$`\varphi _\tau (k_{})={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi R^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^3N}{d\tau d^2k_{}}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi R^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{dxG(x,k_{}^2)}{d^2k_{}}}`$ (5.5)
denote the gluon density in the transverse phase-space. We have $`\varphi _\tau (k_{})\mu _\tau (k_{})/k_{}^2`$ . This relation, together with the previous results for the charge-charge correlator $`\mu _\tau (k_{})`$, implies the graphical representations in Fig. 6, which are interpreted as follows:

At very large $`k_{}Q_s(\tau )`$, one finds the expected bremsstrahlung spectrum $`1/k_{}^2`$, due to radiation from independent colour sources (cf. eq. (5.1)). For lower momenta, but still well above $`Q_s(\tau )`$, the spectrum gets softer $`1/\sqrt{k_{}^2}`$ thanks to the BFKL evolution (cf. eq. (5.2)), but the density increases rapidly with the energy, as $`x^\lambda `$ with $`\lambda =\omega \overline{\alpha }_s`$. Finally, at $`k_{}<Q_s(\tau )`$, there is marginal saturation (in the sense of only a logarithmic increase) with respect to both $`1/k_{}^2`$ and $`1/x`$ (cf. eq. (5.4)). Thus, with decreasing $`x`$, the new gluons are predominantly produced at large transverse momenta $`>Q_s(\tau )`$, where the density is lower, and the repulsive interactions are less important.

## 6 GEOMETRIC SCALING

At saturation, the gluon phase-space density defined in eq. (5.5) reads (see Fig. 6) :

$`\varphi _\tau (k_{}){\displaystyle \frac{N_c^21}{16\pi ^4}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{c\overline{\alpha }_s}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q_s^2(\tau )}{k_{}^2}}.`$ (6.1)
In addition to its saturation features alluded to before, and to the $`1/\alpha _s`$ enhancement, this function exhibits another interesting property, generally referred to as “geometric scaling”: It depends upon the two kinematical variables $`\tau `$ and $`k_{}^2`$ only via the ratio $`k_{}^2/Q_s^2(\tau )`$ (the “scaling variable”). This is a natural property at saturation, where there is only one intrinsic scale, the saturation momentum. Other quantities, like the dipole-hadron scattering amplitude $`𝒩_\tau (r_{})`$, show in this regime a similar behaviour .

But at higher momenta $`k_{}^2Q_s^2(\tau )`$, or shorter distances $`r_{}1/Q_s(\tau )`$, where saturation effects should not be important, there is a priori no reason to expect such a scaling. And indeed, the gluon distribution in eqs. (2.4) or (5.2), or the scattering amplitude in the BFKL approximation (which follows from eqs. (2.1) and (2.4)) :

$`𝒩_\tau (Q^2)|_{BFKL}\mathrm{exp}\left\{\omega \overline{\alpha }_s\tau {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\beta \overline{\alpha }_s\tau }}\left(\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}\right)^2\right\}`$ (6.2)
(with the notation $`Q^21/r_{}^2`$) show no obvious scaling.

It may thus appear as a surprise that the HERA data on the total cross section for $`\gamma ^{}p`$ deep inelastic scattering show nevertheless geometric scaling to a quite good accuracy for $`x<0.01`$ and all $`Q^2`$ up to relatively high values $`400\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}^2`$  (see Fig. 7). Such $`Q^2`$ are significantly higher than the estimated value of the saturation scale at HERA, as extracted from fits to $`F_2`$ within the “saturation model”  : $`Q_s^21\mathrm{}2\mathrm{GeV}^2`$.

Motivated by this experimental observation, we have reconsidered the scaling properties of the dipole-hadron scattering amplitude at momenta $`Q^2`$ above the saturation scale , and discovered that the BFKL solution shows approximate scaling within a window $`Q_s^2Q^2<Q_s^4/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$. The upper limit is of $`O(100\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}^2)`$, in agreement with the data.

The basic argument is simple enough to be explained here: Let me replace $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$ by $`Q_s^2(\tau )`$ as the reference scale in eq. (6.2), with $`Q_s^2(\tau )`$ given by eq. (2.7):

$`\mathrm{ln}(Q^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)=\mathrm{ln}(Q^2/Q_s^2(\tau ))+c\overline{\alpha }_s\tau .`$ (6.3)
This immediately yields, with $`\lambda _s=1/2+c/\beta 0.64`$,

$`𝒩_\tau (Q^2)\mathrm{exp}\left\{\lambda _s\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{Q_s^2(\tau )}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\beta \overline{\alpha }_s\tau }}\left(\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{Q_s^2(\tau )}}\right)^2\right\}.`$ (6.4)
Note that the exponent in (6.4) vanishes for $`Q^2=Q_s^2(\tau )`$, as expected (cf. eq. (2.9)). From the equation above, we see that scaling emerges provided $`Q^2`$ is close enough to $`Q_s^2(\tau )`$ (although still above it) for the second term in the exponent to be negligible. This provides the upper limit on $`Q^2`$ alluded to above.

To conclude this section, let me mention two recent applications of the idea of geometric scaling at saturation to the phenomenology of heavy ion collisions at RHIC. In Ref. , it has been argued that the RHIC data for the transverse momentum distributions of the produced hadrons show geometric scaling in their dependences upon $`m_T`$ and centrality: they are universal functions of $`m_T/\mathrm{\Lambda }_s(b)`$, with $`b=`$ the impact parameter. In Refs. , it has been argued that the scaling violation via the running of the coupling constant \[$`\alpha _s\alpha _s(Q_s^2(\tau ))`$ in eq. (6.1)\] may explain the observed centrality dependence of the multiplicity at RHIC.

## 7 FROISSART BOUND FOR DIPOLE-HADRON SCATTERING

Let me now return to the dipole-hadron collision, and address the fundamental question of the asymptotic behaviour of the total cross-section as $`s\mathrm{}`$. Since this is obtained by integrating the scattering amplitude $`𝒩_\tau (x_{},y_{})𝒩_\tau (r_{},b_{})`$ (with $`r_{}=x_{}y_{}`$ and $`b_{}=(x_{}+y_{})/2`$) over all the impact parameters $`b_{}`$ (see Fig. 8) :

$`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}(\tau ,r_{})=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}{\displaystyle d^2b_{}𝒩_\tau (r_{},b_{})},`$ (7.1)
it is clear that there are actually two issues that are concerned by this question:
(i) the increase of the scattering amplitude with $`\tau `$ at fixed impact parameter, and (ii) the decrease of the scattering amplitude with $`b_{}`$ at large impact parameters. The first issue is that of unitarity : the local scattering amplitude cannot exceed the unitarity bound $`𝒩_\tau (r_{},b_{})1`$. The second issue is that of confinement: this is why hadron interactions have only a finite range.

(i) The unitarization problem can be addressed within the perturbative framework. Clearly, the BFKL equation violates unitarity, but this is restored by saturation, which ensures that $`𝒩_\tau (r_{},b_{})1`$ for any $`r_{}>1/Q_s(\tau ,b_{})`$. Here, $`Q_s(\tau ,b_{})`$ is the local saturation scale, defined as in eq. (2.6), but with $`xG(x,Q^2)/\pi R^2`$ replaced by $`xG(x,Q^2,b_{})dN/d\tau d^2b_{}`$ (the gluon density at the given $`b_{}`$).

The behaviour of $`𝒩_\tau (r_{},b_{})`$ as a function of $`r_{}`$ at fixed $`b_{}`$ is illustrated in Fig. 9 for two different energies. One sees a change in regime around $`r_{}1/Q_s(\tau ,b_{})`$ from “colour transparency” at small $`r_{}`$ (cf. eq. (2.1)) to “blackness” at large $`r_{}`$. This behaviour can be obtained by numerically solving the BK equation (3.5) .

Some limiting regimes can be also studied analytically. For $`r_{}1/Q_s(\tau ,b_{})`$, one obtains .:

$`𝒩_\tau (r_{},b_{})\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\mathrm{exp}\left\{r_{}^2{\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2\alpha _sC_F}{N_c^21}}xG(x,1/r_{}^2,b_{})\right\},`$ (7.2)
which exhibits the unitarizing role of the multiple scattering (compare to eq. (2.1), which describes a single scattering). For $`r_{}1/Q_s(\tau ,b_{})`$ one rather has  :

$`𝒩_\tau (r_{},b_{})\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\mathrm{exp}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2c}}\left(\mathrm{ln}Q_s^2(\tau ,b_{})r_{}^2\right)^2\right\},`$ (7.3)
which shows geometric scaling with the scale set by the local saturation scale $`Q_s^2(\tau ,b_{})`$.

With increasing $`\tau `$ at fixed $`b_{}`$, the saturation scale $`Q_s^2(\tau ,b_{})`$ increases and eventually becomes larger than the external resolution scale $`Q^21/r_{}^2`$ (see Fig. 8). Once this happens, the local scattering amplitude reaches the unitarity limit: $`𝒩_\tau (r_{},b_{})1`$ (i.e., the hadron becomes locally “black”), and then remains constant when the energy is further increased. Since the gluon density is larger at the center of the hadron, the black disk first appears at $`b_{}=0`$, and then extends radially with increasing $`\tau `$ (see below). This transverse expansion explains why the total cross-section keeps growing even at very high energies. Let $`R(\tau ,Q^2)`$ denote the black disk radius. Then, by definition :

$`𝒩_\tau (Q^2,b_{})\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\mathrm{for}bR(\tau ,Q^2)`$ (7.4)
\[with $`𝒩_\tau (Q^2,b_{})𝒩_\tau (r_{}=1/Q,b_{})`$ from now on\], or, equivalently,

$`Q_s^2(\tau ,b_{})=Q^2\mathrm{for}b=R(\tau ,Q^2).`$ (7.5)
In order to compute $`R(\tau ,Q^2)`$, one needs to understand the evolution of the scattering amplitude with $`\tau `$ at impact parameters outside the black disk, i.e., in the “grey area” at $`b>R(\tau ,Q^2)`$ (see Fig. 8). This brings us to the problem of confinement.

(ii) If $`b>R(\tau ,Q^2)`$, the gluon density is low and $`𝒩_\tau (Q^2,b_{})`$ is simply proportional to the local distribution function $`xG(x,Q^2,b_{})`$, cf. eq. (2.1). That is, the dipole is probing the gluon fields with momenta $`k_{}^2Q^2`$ created at $`b_{}`$ by all the colour sources in the hadron. Because of confinement, such fields must fall off exponentially when the transverse separation between $`b_{}`$ and the colour sources is larger than the pion Compton wavelength $`1/m_\pi `$ (since $`m_\pi `$ is the lowest mass gap in QCD). We thus expect  :

$`𝒩_\tau (Q^2,b_{})\mathrm{e}^{2m_\pi b}\mathrm{for}bR(\tau ,Q^2)>1/2m_\pi ,`$ (7.6)
where twice the pion mass enters the exponent because of isospin conservation: The long-range scattering is controlled by pion exchange, and pions have isospin one, while gluons have isospin zero, so the scattering proceeds via the exchange of (at least) two pions. A similar exponential decrease with $`b_{}`$ holds for the saturation scale  (see Fig. 8).

Since $`𝒩_\tau (Q^2,b_{})`$ is rapidly decreasing at $`b_{}R(\tau ,Q^2)`$, the total cross-section is dominated by the black disk:

$`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}(\tau ,Q^2)\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\pi R^2(\tau ,Q^2).`$ (7.7)
Thus, the relevant question is: How fast expands the black disk with $`\tau `$ ?

As shown in Ref. , and I shall briefly explain here, one can answer this question by combining the perturbative (but non-linear) evolution with $`\tau `$ with the non-perturbative boundary condition (7.6) due to confinement. Perturbation theory applies since the points at which the hadron turns from “grey” to “black” (see Fig. 8) are characterized by sufficiently large gluon densities, as we shall see.

Specifically, we are in a weak coupling regime provided the local saturation scale is hard: $`Q_s^2(\tau ,b)\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2`$. Given eq. (7.5) and the fact that the dipole is small ($`Q^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2`$), it is clear that there exists a grey corona at $`R(\tau ,Q^2)<b<R_H(\tau )`$ within which perturbation theory applies (since $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2Q_s^2(\tau ,b)Q^2`$ at any $`b_{}`$ within this corona). Here, $`R_H(\tau )`$ is the radial distance at which the saturation scale falls down to $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ (see Fig. 8). We shall check a posteriori that this perturbative corona is wide enough to allow for the calculation of the expansion rate of the black disk.

For impact parameters within this corona, $`𝒩_\tau (Q^2,b_{})1`$, so one may expect the linear, BFKL, approximation to apply. This turns out to be correct eventually, but the complete argument is more subtle : By itself, the BFKL equation would allow for long-range interactions between the incoming dipole and the colour sources in the hadron, but in the full equation (3.5) such interactions are suppressed by the non-linear effects whenever the transverse separation exceeds $`1/Q_s(\tau ,b_{})`$. Physically, this reflects the fact that the saturated gluons are colour neutral (cf. eq. (5.4)), and therefore couple to the incoming $`q\overline{q}`$ pair only via dipole-dipole forces, which have a rapid fall-off with $`b_{}`$, and therefore do not contribute significantly to the scattering in the grey corona. Rather, the dominant contributions come from the nearby colour sources, i.e., the sources located within a saturation disk around the impact parameter $`b_{}`$ (see Fig. 8):

$`|z_{}b_{}|Q_s^1(\tau ,b_{}).`$ (7.8)
To describe such short-range contributions, one can indeed rely on the BFKL equation, but which is supplemented with an infrared cutoff $`Q_s(\tau ,b_{})`$, to remove the unphysical long-range contributions.

The crucial point is that the long-range interactions are cut off by saturation effects already at the short scale $`1/Q_s(\tau ,b_{})`$, which is much shorter than the soft scale $`1/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ at which the confinement plays a role. Because of that, the perturbative evolution with $`\tau `$ is not sensitive to the transverse inhomogeneity in the hadron, which manifests itself only on the very large scale $`1/m_\pi 1/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ (cf. eq. (7.6)). That is, the evolution proceeds quasi-locally in the impact parameter space, in such a way that the $`b_{}`$–dependence of the scattering amplitude factorizes out, and is fixed by the initial conditions. To summarize:

$`𝒩_\tau (Q^2,b_{})|_{grey}`$ $``$ $`𝒩_\tau (Q^2)|_{BFKL}\times \mathrm{e}^{2m_\pi b}`$ (7.9)
$``$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left\{2m_\pi b+\omega \overline{\alpha }_s\tau {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}\right\},`$
where the $`b_{}`$–dependence comes from eq. (7.6), and in writing the second line I have used the BFKL solution (6.2) (with the diffusion term omitted, as appropriate at high energies). This applies only for points in the grey area ($`b>R(\tau ,Q^2)`$), but it can be used to estimate the black disk radius from the condition (7.4). One obtains:

$`R(\tau ,Q^2){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m_\pi }}\left(\omega \overline{\alpha }_s\tau {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}\right),`$ (7.10)
which implies the following result for the total cross-section at high energy  :

$`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}(s,Q^2){\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\omega \overline{\alpha }_s}{m_\pi }}\right)^2\mathrm{ln}^2s\mathrm{as}s\mathrm{}.`$ (7.11)
This saturates the Froissart bound, with a proportionality coefficient which is universal (i.e., the same for all hadrons), and which reflects the combined role of perturbative and non-perturbative physics in controlling the asymptotic behaviour at high energy.

At this point, one should recall that the Froissart bound $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}\sigma _0\mathrm{ln}^2s`$  is a consequence of general principles (unitarity, crossing, and analiticity), but does not rely on detailed dynamical information. So, in reality, this bound may very well be not saturated. It so happens, however, that the measured cross-sections (e.g., for $`pp`$ and $`p\overline{p}`$ scattering) show a slow, but monotonous, increase with $`s`$, which can be reasonably well fitted by a $`\mathrm{ln}^2s`$ behaviour . This suggests that the Froissart bound is actually saturated in nature, and the mechanism described above provides a physical picture for such a saturation, with a definite prediction for the scale $`\sigma _0`$.

From eq. (7.9), one can compute also the radius $`R_H(\tau )`$ where the saturation scale decreases to $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ (beyond which perturbation theory fails to apply). According to eqs. (7.4)–(7.5), this is the same as the black disk radius for a large dipole with $`Q^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2`$:

$`R_H(\tau ){\displaystyle \frac{\omega \overline{\alpha }_s}{2m_\pi }}\tau .`$ (7.12)
One can now compute the radial extent of the grey corona within which perturbation theory is applicable:

$`R_H(\tau )R(\tau ,Q^2){\displaystyle \frac{1}{4m_\pi }}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}.`$ (7.13)
This is independent of $`\tau `$, and much larger than $`1/m_\pi `$ (because of the large logarithm $`\mathrm{ln}(Q^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)`$), which demonstrates the consistency of the previous calculation: During a “time” interval $`\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{\Delta }\tau 1`$ (the typical rapidity increment at high energy), the black disk expands from $`R(\tau ,Q^2)`$ to $`R(\tau ,Q^2)+\omega /2m_\pi `$, cf. eq. (7.10), which is much smaller than $`R_H(\tau )`$, and therefore still in the region controlled by perturbation theory. That is, the expansion of the black disk proceeds within the perturbative corona for intervals $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ which are large enough to allow for a controlled calculation of the rate of this expansion .

On the other hand, one cannot rely on perturbation theory alone to follow the expansion of the black disk for arbitrarily large “time” intervals $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$. For instance, it makes physically no sense to compute in perturbation theory the gluon distribution or the scattering amplitude at very large impact parameters $`b_{}R_H(\tau )`$, where formally $`Q_s^2(\tau ,b)\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2`$. But if one insists in doing so, one finds that, because of the lack of confinement, the perturbative evolution (say, according to the BK equation (3.5)) generates long-range gluon fields which replace, at sufficiently large distances, the exponential fall-off of the initial distribution by just a power-law fall-off. If one pushes the perturbative expansion until the black disk enters this power-law tail, then its expansion rate speeds up, and eventually violates unitarity .

Clearly, this violation is an artifact of pushing perturbation theory beyond its limits of validity. To generate a significant power-law tail, the perturbative fields must propagate over distances many times the pion Compton wavelength. Such long-range fields are certainly unphysical: in the real world, they are removed by confinement.

The true difficulty of perturbation theory is that it cannot be used to generate the exponential tail at large distances. But this is to be expected: such a tail can arise only from confinement. In any case, this difficulty has no incidence on the previous calculation of the rate of the expansion, since this requires only a limited evolution in $`\tau `$ which is driven by short-range interactions. The prediction (7.11) of this calculation can be extended444Indeed, at any $`\tau `$, one can repeat this calculation and obtain an expansion rate consistent with eq. (7.10). to arbitrarily large $`\tau `$, although the perturbative evolution becomes meaningless eventually.

To conclude, while perturbation theory alone appears to be sufficient to describe unitarization at fixed impact parameter, one still needs some information about the finite range of the strong interactions in order to be able to compute total cross-sections. This is reminiscent of an old argument by Heisenberg  which combines unitarity and short-rangeness (as modelled by a Yukawa potential) to deduce cross-sections which saturate the Froissart bound. Fifty years later, our progress in understanding high energy strong interactions allows us to confirm Heisenberg’s intuition, and identify short-rangeness with confinement, and unitarization with saturation.

## 8 APPLICATIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY

I conclude this review with a succint enumeration of recent applications of the concept of CGC to the phenomenology of deep inelastic scattering at HERA, and of relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC (with perspectives for LHC). More detailed discussions and more references can be found in . But let me start with a few words of caution:

(a ) The theoretical analysis underlying this concept relies heavily on the smallness of the coupling constant, which in turn requires a rather hard saturation scale: $`Q_s^2(\tau )\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2`$. But for the currently available energies this condition is only marginally satisfied. Indeed, one estimates that $`Q_s^21\mathrm{}2\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ at both RHIC and HERA .

(b ) The general formalism, and most of the theoretical calculations, have been developed so far only to lowest order in $`\alpha _s`$. But for realistic comparisons with phenomenology, a NLO formalism (at least) is necessary. The NLO corrections to the BFKL kernel became finally available , but it turned out that resummation techniques are necessary to render these corrections meaningful . Very recently, these methods have been used to estimate the saturation scale from the NLO BFKL equation  (via the same strategy as already used at LO; cf. Sect. 2.2). As a result, the logarithmic derivative $`\lambda _sd\mathrm{ln}[Q_s^2(\tau )/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2]/d\tau `$ appears to decrease from the LO estimate $`c\overline{\alpha }_s1`$ (cf. eq. (2.6)) to $`\lambda _s0.30`$, which is a reasonable value for the HERA phenomenology . A fully non-linear NLO formalism is still to be developed (see however ).

(c ) For applications to heavy ion collisions, the present formalism provides only the initial conditions, i.e., the wavefunctions of the incoming nuclei. Based on this, various methods have been developed to compute the melting of the CGC in the early stages of the collision, and the associated gluon production . But very little is known from first principles about the subsequent evolution of the liberated partons. Their initial spectra and distributions can, and most certainly will, be modified by final state interactions, flow, or thermalization, and may further change in the process of hadronization, but these various processes are not yet under theoretical control. It is therefore difficult, if not impossible, to unambiguously identify at this stage the effects of the initial conditions (say, of saturation) in the measured particle yields and correlations.

This being said, it is remarkable that there exists already a significant amount of data, both at HERA and at RHIC, which hint towards saturation and the CGC, or at least are consistent with this physical picture.

Let me start with DIS at small-$`x`$, for which the theoretical calculations are better under control, and quantitative predictions can be made. It has been shown in Refs.  that the HERA data for both inclusive and diffractive proton structure functions can be well accounted for by a phenomenological model which incorporates saturation. The success of this simple model for diffraction is particularly significant, since the diffractive cross-section is more sensible than the inclusive one to dipole fluctuations with a large transverse size $`r_{}`$, and thus to saturation effects in the proton wavefunction. The same model has motivated the search for geometrical scaling in the HERA data , with the remarkable results discussed in Sect. 6. As shown in Ref. , it is possible to use the data on the differential cross-section for vector meson production in DIS (say, $`\gamma ^{}p\rho p`$) to obtain information about the impact parameter dependence of the dipole scattering amplitude. The phenomenological analysis in Ref.  indicates a reasonable amount of blackness in the proton at central impact parameters already for $`x10^3`$.

Consider heavy ion collisions now. In Refs. , the particle production in $`AuAu`$ collisions at RHIC has been first analyzed from the perspective of the CGC. Specifically, the measured hadron multiplicities have been compared, in so far as their dependences upon centrality, rapidity, and total energy are concerned, to the respective predictions of the CGC picture. The agreement is quite good, in fact, remarkably good, given the many sources of uncertainty that I have mentioned before.

A systematic approach, aiming at the numerical resolution of the classical Yang-Mills equations which describe the scattering of two CGCs, has been developed and successively refined in Refs. . In this approach too, one finds a reasonable agreement between the centrality dependence of the gluons liberated in the collision (as obtained from lattice simulations) and that of the charged hadrons measured at RHIC.

For proton-nucleus ($`pA`$) collisions, and for DIS, there are also analytic calculations of the gluon and particle production, which include all multiple rescatterings off the strong colour field (the CGC) of the nucleus. The inclusive gluon production cross-section has been computed for $`pA`$  and DIS , and a similar calculation for $`AA`$ has been attempted in . Still for $`pA`$ collisions, one has calculated the cross-sections for the production of jets , photons and dileptons . The charm production from the CGC in peripheral heavy-ion collisions has been investigated in . See also the closely related work in Ref. . Instantons in the saturation environment have been considered in Ref. . At a conceptual level, there has been significant progress towards understanding the role of inelastic scattering for thermalization, and the way how kinetic theory could emerge from the classical field dynamics that applies at the earliest stages .