Abstract
The computation of radiative energy loss in a finite-size QCD medium with dynamical constituents is a key ingredient for obtaining reliable predictions for jet quenching in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. We here present a theoretical formalism for the calculation of the first order in opacity radiative energy loss of a quark jet traveling through a finite-size dynamical QCD medium. We show that, while each individual contribution to the energy loss is infrared divergent, the divergence is naturally regulated once all diagrams are taken into account. Finite-size effects are shown to induce a nonlinear path-length dependence of the energy loss, recovering both the incoherent Gunion-Bertsch limit, as well as destructive Landau-Pomeanchuk-Migdal limit. Finally, our results suggest a remarkably simple general mapping between energy-loss expressions for static and dynamical QCD media.
7 More- Received 15 September 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.80.064909
©2009 American Physical Society
Viewpoint
Getting to the bottom of the heavy quark jet puzzle
Published 21 December 2009
A recent theory of high-energy bottom quark jet quenching in nuclear collisions accentuates the novelty of heavy quark jet dynamics in strongly coupled quark-gluon plasmas discovered at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.
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