Hard parton rescatterings and minijets in nuclear collisions at the CERN LHC

The average number of minijets and the corresponding transverse energy produced in heavy ion collisions are evaluated by including explicitly semi-hard parton rescatterings in the dynamics of the interaction. At the CERN LHC semi-hard rescatterings have a sizable effect on the global characteristics of the typical inelastic event. An interesting feature is that the dependence on the cutoff which separates soft and hard parton interactions becomes less critical after taking rescatterings into account.