The effective pressure of a saturated gluon plasma

The evolution of the gluon plasma produced with saturation initial conditions is calculated via transport theory for nuclear collisions with 0.1 < <root>s < 10A TeV. The effective longitudinal pressure is found to remain significantly below the lattice QCD pressure with these initial conditions until the plasma cools to near the confinement scale. The absolute value of the transverse energy per unit of rapidity and its dependence on beam energy is shown to provide a sensitive test of gluon saturation models since the fractional transverse energy loss due to final state interactions is predicted to be much smaller and exhibit a weaker energy dependence than nondissipative hydrodynamics applied throughout the evolution. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.