Parton rescattering and screening in Au plus Au collisions at RHIC

We study the microscopic dynamics of quarks and gluons in relativistic heavy ion collisions in the framework of the Parton Cascade Model. We use lowest order perturbative QCD cross sections with fixed lower momentum cutoff p(T)(min). We calculate the time-evolution of the Debye-screening mass muD for Au + Au collisions at roots = 200 GeV per nucleon pair. The screening mass is used to determine a lower limit for the allowed range of p(T)(min). We also determine the energy density reached through T hard and semi-hard processes at RHIC, obtain a lower bound for the rapidity density of charged hadrons produced by semi-hard interactions, and analyze the extent of perturbative rescattering among partons. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.