Additive quark model of multiparticle production and nucleus-nucleus collisions at high energies

An extension of the additive quark model of hadron-hadron and hadron-nucleus collisions to the case of nucleus-nucleus interactions at very high energies is presented. Estimates are given of the number of "wounded" and spectator quarks, and of the number of colored strings spanned between interacting nuclei. These estimates indicate the possibility of a rich structure of the spectra of produced particles and an increase (relative to the nucleon-nucleon case) of multiplicities up to a factor ∼50 in collisions of heavy nuclei.