English

How do quarks and gluons lose energy in the QGP?

Nuclear Experiment 2015-06-19 v1

Abstract

At RHIC, a suppression, RAA0.2R_{AA}\approx 0.2 relative to binary-scaling, for π0\pi^0 with 5pT205\leq p_T\leq 20 GeV/c was discovered in central Au+Au collisions at sNN=200\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200 GeV, and surprisingly also for single-electrons from the decay of heavy quarks. Both these results have been confirmed in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC at sNN=2.76\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76 TeV. In this pTp_T range, the LHC results for pions nearly overlap the RHIC results but the flatter spectrum at LHC implies that the energy loss in the medium must be 40\sim 40% larger than at RHIC. At LHC, the unique and beautiful measurement of the fractional transverse momentum imbalance 1p^T2/p^T11-\langle{\hat{p}_{T_2}/\hat{p}_{T_1}}\rangle of di-jets in Pb+Pb collisions relative to p-p collisions, shows 15%\approx 15\% for jets with 120p^T1360120\leq\hat{p}_{T_1}\leq 360 GeV/c. This is a much smaller fractional jet imbalance than the 45%\approx 45\% derived from two-particle correlations of di-jet fragments at RHIC corresponding to jet p^T1020\hat{p}_T\approx 10-20 GeV/c. This presents a challenge to both theory and experiment for improved understanding. There are many other such unresolved issues, for instance, the absence of evidence for a q^\hat{q} effect by observation of momentum transferred to the medium by outgoing partons. An implied hard scattering component for the soft physics multiplicity distributions in A+A collisions based on a popular formula, dNchAA/dη=[(1x)NpartdNchpp/dη/2+xNcolldNchpp/dη]{dN_{\rm ch}^{AA}/d\eta}= [(1-x) \langle{N_{\rm part}}\rangle {dN_{\rm ch}^{pp}/d\eta}/2 + x\, \langle{N_{\rm coll}}\rangle {dN_{\rm ch}^{pp}/d\eta}], seems to be an unphysical way to understand the deviation from NpartN_{\rm part} scaling. Based on recent p-p and d+A measurements, a more physical way is presented along with several other stimulating results and ideas from recent d+Au (p+Pb) measurements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1404.6232,
  title  = {How do quarks and gluons lose energy in the QGP?},
  author = {M. J. Tannenbaum},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1404.6232},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

16 pages, 20 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on High-pT physics at LHC (25th-28th September, 2013,LPSC, Grenoble, France)