Novel QCD effects in nuclear collisions

Abstract

Heavy ion collisions can provide a novel environment for testing fundamental dynamical processes in QCD, including minijet formation and interactions, formation zone phenomena, color filtering, coherent co-mover interactions, and new higher twist mechanisms which could account for the observed excess production and anomalous nuclear target dependence of heavy flavor production. The possibility of using light-cone thermodynamics and a corresponding covariant temperature to describe the QCD phases of the nuclear fragmentation region is also briefly discussed.