un 2 00 4 Random walks of partons in SU ( N c ) and classical representations of color charges in QCD at small x

The effective action for wee partons in large nuclei includes a sum over static color sources distributed in a wide range of representations of the SU(Nc) color group. The problem can be formulated as a random walk of partons in the Nc − 1 dimensional space spanned by the Casimirs of SU(Nc). For a large number of sources, k ≫ 1, we show explicitly that the most likely representation is a classical representation of order O( √ k). The quantum sum over representations is well approximated by a path integral over classical sources with an exponential weight whose argument is the quadratic Casimir operator of the group. The contributions of the higher Nc−2 Casimir operators are suppressed by powers of k. Other applications of the techniques developed here are discussed briefly.