I use the holographic gauge/gravity duality to systematically calculate the jet quenching parameters in strongly coupled anisotropic plasmas in the presence of external magnetic fields. The magnetic field breaks down spatial rotation symmetry from $SO(3)$ to $SO(2)$, leading to the presence of multiple anisotropic jet quenching parameters, which are evaluated here in two quite different holographic settings. One of them corresponds to a top-down deformation of the strongly coupled $\mathcal{N} = 4$ Super Yang-Mills plasma triggered by an external magnetic field, while the other one is a bottom-up Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton model of phenomenological relevance for high energy peripheral heavy ion collisions, since it is able to provide a quantitative description of $(2+1)$-flavors lattice QCD thermodynamics with physical quark masses at zero and nonzero magnetic fields. I find for both models an overall enhancement of all the anisotropic jet quenching parameters with increasing magnetic fields. Moreover, I also conclude that for both models transverse momentum broadening is larger in transverse directions than in the direction of the magnetic field. Since these conclusions are shown to hold for two rather different holographic setups at finite temperature and magnetic fields, they are suggested as fairly robust features of strongly coupled anisotropic magnetized plasmas.
The jet quenching parameter of an anisotropic plasma depends on the relative orientation between the anisotropic direction, the direction of motion of the parton, and the direction along which the momentum broadening is measured. We calculate the jet quenching parameter of an anisotropic, strongly coupled N=4 plasma by means of its gravity dual. We present the results for arbitrary orientations and arbitrary values of the anisotropy. The anisotropic value can be larger or smaller than the isotropic one, and this depends on whether the comparison is made at equal temperatures or at equal entrop…
We propose a hybrid model for medium-induced parton energy loss, in which the hard scales in the process are treated perturbatively, while the soft scales which involve strong coupling dynamics are modeled by AdS/CFT calculations. After fitting a single parameter on R_AA for central Au+Au collisions, we are able to predict different observables like R_AA and I_AA as a function of centrality and reaction plane. We obtain a consistent picture of how jet quenching is modified if the quark-gluon plasma is strongly interacting, and we provide quantitative predictions.
We estimate the energy loss distribution and investigate the quenching of hadron spectra in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions due to the collisional energy loss of energetic partons from hard parton collisions in the initial stage.
We derive the quadratic action of the fluctuations around the classical world sheet underlying the jet quenching from AdS/CFT. After obtaining the correspondence partition function, the expansion of the jet quenching parameter of $\mathcal N=4$ super symmetric Yang-Mills theory is carried out to the sub-leading term in the large 't Hooft coupling $λ$ at a nonzero temperature. The strong coupling corresponds to the semi-classical expansion of the string-sigma model, the gravity dual of the Wilson loop operator, with the sub-leading term expressed in terms of functional determinants of fluctuati…
We present calculations in which an energetic light quark shoots through a finite slab of strongly coupled ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) plasma, with thickness $L$, focussing on what comes out on the other side. We find that even when the "jets" that emerge from the plasma have lost a substantial fraction of their energy they look in almost all respects like "jets" in vacuum with the same reduced energy. The one possible exception is that the opening angle of the "jet" is larger after passage through the slab of plasma than before. Along the way, we obtain a fully geometric char…
$\hat q$ is the average squared transverse momentum transfer per unit length to a high-energy particle traversing a QCD medium such as a quark-gluon plasma. We find the (UV-regulated) value of $\hat q$ to leading order in the weak coupling limit, $\alphas(T) \ll 1$. We then use this value to generalize previous analytic results on the gluon bremsstrahlung and pair production rates for massless high-energy particles in a weakly-coupled quark-gluon plasma, at next-to-leading logarithmic order.
The exploration of the strong-interaction matter under extreme conditions is one of the main goals of relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We provide some of the main results on the novel properties of quark-gluon plasma, with particular focus given to the strong collectivity and the color opaqueness exhibited by such hot and dense matter produced in high-energy nuclear collisions at RHIC and the LHC.
The jet quenching parameter $\hat{q}$ is analyzed for a quark jet propagating in an anisotropic plasma. The momentum anisotropy is calculated at high temperature of the underlying quark-gluon plasma. $\hat{q}$ is explicitly estimated in leading-logarithmic approximation by the broadening of the massless quark interacting via gluon exchange. A plasma instability is present. Strong indications are found that $\hat{q}$ is increasing with increasing anisotropy. Possible implications for the saturation scale $Q_s$ in $A-A$ collisions are pointed out.
We show that partons traversing a quark-gluon plasma can lose substantial amounts of energy also by scatterings, and not only through medium-induced radiation as mainly considered previously. Results from Monte Carlo simulations of soft interactions of partons, emerging from a hard scattering, through multiple elastic scatterings on gluons in an expanding relativistic plasma show a sizeable jet quenching which can account for a substantial part of the effect observed in RHIC data.
Using the Fokker-Planck equation we have studied the drag co-efficient $A(t)$ and the consequent shift $Δp_\perp (L)$ in the transverse momentum due to collisional energy loss of energetic partons while passing through a chemically equilibrating quark-gluon plasma. Based on these we estimate the quenching factor $Q(p_\perp)$ when the medium is undergoing longitudinal expansion governed by master rate equations. In contrast to the case of chemically equilibrated plasma investigated earlier by Mustafa and Thoma \cite{mus} we find less quenching because our calculated $Q(p_\perp)$ is always great…
We present a new definition of the jet quenching parameter $\hat{q}$ in a weakly-coupled quark-gluon plasma undergoing boost-invariant longitudinal expansion. We propose a boost-invariant definition of $\hat{q}$, which is proportional to the broadening of the angular variables $η$ (the pseudo-rapidity) and $ϕ$ (the azimuthal angle). We furthermore consider radiative corrections to $\hat{q}$ and find potentially large corrections enhanced by a double logarithm like the case of a static medium. But unlike for the static medium, these corrections are now local in (proper) time.
We study the effects of jet quenching on the hydrodynamical evolution of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) fluid created in a heavy-ion collision. In jet quenching, a hard QCD parton, before fragmenting into a jet of hadrons, deposits a fraction of its energy in the medium, leading to suppressed production of high-pT hadrons. Assuming that the deposited energy quickly thermalizes, we simulate the subsequent hydrodynamic evolution of the QGP fluid. For partons moving at supersonic speed, v_p > c_s, and sufficiently large energy loss, a shock wave forms leading to conical flow [1]. The PHENIX Collabo…
Recently Liu, Rajagopal and Wiedemann (LRW) [hep-ph/0605178] proposed a first principle, nonperturbative quantum field theoretic definition of ``jet quenching parameter'' \hat{q} used in models of medium-induced radiative parton energy loss in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC. Relating \hat{q} to a short-distance behavior of a certain light-like Wilson loop, they used gauge theory-string theory correspondence to evaluate \hat{q} for the strongly coupled N=4 SU(N_c) gauge theory plasma. We generalize analysis of LRW to strongly coupled non-conformal gauge theory plasma. We find that a jet que…
The phenomenon of jet quenching, related to the momentum broadening of a high-energy parton, provides important experimental evidence for the production of a strongly coupled, deconfined medium in heavy-ion collisions. Its theoretical description has been addressed in a number of works, both perturbatively and non-perturbatively (using the gauge-gravity duality). In this contribution, following a proposal by Caron-Huot, we discuss a novel approach to this problem, enabling one to extract non-perturbative information on this real-time phenomenon from simulations on a Euclidean lattice.
We use our non-conformal holographic bottom-up model for QCD described in 1012.0116 to further study the effect of the QCD trace anomaly on the energy loss of both light and heavy quarks in a strongly coupled plasma. We compute the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ for bottom and charm quarks in an expanding plasma with Glauber initial conditions. We find that the maximum stopping distance of light quarks in a non-conformal plasma scales with the energy with a temperature (and energy) dependent effective power.
We investigate the energy loss of quarks and gluons produced in hard processes resulting from final state rescatterings in a finite quark-gluon plasma. The angular distribution of the soft gluon bremsstrahlung induced by n_s=1 rescatterings in the plasma is computed in the Gyulassy-Wang model. Special focus is on how the interference between the initial hard radiation amplitude, the multiple induced Gunion-Bertsch radiation amplitudes, and gluon rescattering amplitudes modifies the classical parton cascade results.
We analyze the transverse momentum broadening in the absence of radiation of an energetic parton propagating through quark-gluon plasma via Soft Collinear Effective Theory (SCET). We show that the probability for picking up transverse momentum k_\perp is given by the Fourier transform of the expectation value of two transversely separated light-like path-ordered Wilson lines. The subtleties about the ordering of operators do not change the \hat q value for the strongly coupled plasma of N=4 SYM theory.
We study, in a pQCD calculation augmented by nuclear effects, the jet energy loss needed to reproduce the pi^0 spectra in Au+Au collisions at large p_T, measured by PHENIX at RHIC. The transverse width of the parton momentum distributions (intrinsic-k_T) is used phenomenologically to obtain a reliable baseline pp result. Jet quenching is applied to the nuclear spectra (including shadowing and multiscattering) to fit the data.
We study the phenomenon of transverse momentum broadening for a high-$p_T$ parton propagating through a weakly-coupled quark-gluon plasma undergoing boost-invariant longitudinal expansion. We propose a boost-invariant description for this phenomenon, in which the broadening refers to the angular variables $η$ (the pseudo-rapidity) and $ϕ$ (the azimuthal angle). The jet quenching parameter $\hat{q}$ which enters this description depends upon the proper time alone. We furthermore consider radiative corrections to $\hat q$. As in the case of a static medium, we find potentially large corrections …
We evaluate the medium suppression of light hadron spectra in $pp$ collisions at RHIC and LHC energies in the scenario with formation of a mini quark-gluon plasma. We find a significant suppression effect. For $p_{T}\sim 10$ GeV we obtained the reduction of the spectra by $\sim [20-30,25-35,30-40]$ % at $\sqrt{s}=[0.2, 2.76,7]$ TeV. We also discuss how this phenomenon may change the predictions for the nuclear modification factors for $AA$ and $pA$ collisions.
In this article we investigate how the energy and momentum deposited by partonic dijets in the quark-gluon plasma may perturb the geometry-induced hydrodynamic expansion of the bulk nuclear matter created in heavy ion collisions at RHIC. The coupling between the jets and the medium is done through a source term in the energy-momentum conservation equations for ideal hydrodynamics. We concentrate our attention at mid-rapidity and solve the equations event-by-event imposing boost-invariance. For $p_T \gtrsim 1$ GeV the anisotropic flow is found to be considerably enhanced, if the dijets deposit …
We derive an expression relating the transport parameter $\hat{q}$ and the shear viscosity $η$ of a weakly coupled quark-gluon plasma. A deviation from this relation can be regarded as a quantitative measure of ``strong coupling'' of the medium. The ratio $T^3/\hat{q}$, where $T$ is the temperature, is a more broadly valid measure of the coupling strength of the medium than $η/s$, where $s$ denotes the entropy density. Different estimates of $\hat{q}$ derived from existing RHIC data are shown to imply radically different structures of the produced matter.
The near zone energy-momentum tensor of a supersonic heavy quark jet moving through a strongly-coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM plasma is analyzed in terms of first-order Navier-Stokes hydrodynamics. It is shown that the hydrodynamical description of the near quark region worsens with increasing quark velocities. For realistic quark velocities, $v=0.99$, the non-hydrodynamical region is located at a narrow band surrounding the quark with a width of approximately $3/πT$ in the direction parallel to the quark's motion and with a length of roughly $10/πT$ in the perpendicular direction. Our results ca…
We consider five-dimensional AdS-axion-dilaton gravity with a Gauss-Bonnet term and use a black brane solution displaying spatial anisotropy as the gravity dual of a strongly coupled anisotropic plasma. We compute several observables relevant to the study of the plasma, namely, the drag force, the jet quenching parameter, the quarkonium potential and the thermal photon production. The effects of higher derivative corrections and of the anisotropy are discussed and compared with previous results.
Fast thermalization, a subsequent strong buildup of elliptic flow of QCD matter and jet-quenching as found at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are understood as the consequence of perturbative QCD (pQCD) interactions within the 3+1 dimensional parton cascade BAMPS. The main contributions stem from pQCD inspired bremsstrahlung. Comparisons to Au+Au data of the flow parameter v_2 as a function of participation number as well as the gluonic contribution to the nuclear modification factor R_AA for most central collisions are given. Also the shear viscosity to entropy ratio is dynamically…
We extend the analysis of 1211.2199, where the photon production rate of an anisotropic strongly coupled plasma with Nf<<Nc massless quarks was considered. We allow here for non-vanishing quark masses and study how these affect the spectral densities and conductivities. We also compute another important probe of the plasma, the dilepton production rate. We consider generic angles between the anisotropic direction and the photon and dilepton wave vectors, as well as arbitrary quark masses and arbitrary values of the anisotropy parameter. Generically, the anisotropy increases the production rate…
The modification and amplification of the gluon angular distribution produced along with hard jets in nuclear collisions is computed. We consider the limit of a thin quark-gluon plasma, where the number of rescatterings of the jet and gluons is small. The focus is on jet quenching associated with the formation of highly off-shell partons in hard scattering events involving nuclei. The interference between the initial hard radiation amplitude, the multiple induced Gunion-Bertsch radiation amplitudes, and gluon rescattering amplitudes leads to an angular distribution that differs considerably fr…
We consider the bremsstrahlung energy loss of high energy partons moving in the quark-gluon plasma, at weak coupling. We show that the rates for these processes receive large O(g) corrections from classical (nonabelian) plasma physics effects, which are calculated. In the high-energy (deep LPM) regime these corrections can be absorbed in a change of the transverse momentum broadening coefficient $\hat{q}$, which we give to the next-to-leading order. The correction is large even at relatively weak couplings $α_s\sim 0.1$, as is typically found for such effects, signaling difficulties with the p…
We employ the AdS/CFT correspondence to investigate the thermalization of the strongly-coupled plasma and the jet quenching of a hard probe traversing such a thermalizing medium.
In heavy-ion collisions, quark-gluon plasma is likely to be produced with sizable initial pressure anisotropy, which may leave an imprint on electromagnetic observables. In order to model a strongly coupled anisotropic plasma, we use the AdS/CFT correspondence to calculate the current-current correlator of a weakly gauged U(1) subgroup of R symmetry in an N=4 super-Yang-Mills plasma with a (temporarily) fixed anisotropy. The dual geometry, obtained previously by Janik and Witaszczyk, contains a naked singularity which however permits purely infalling boundary conditions and therefore the usual…
We show that the ``perfect fluid'' elliptic flow of the bulk hadrons and the unexpectedly strong quenching of heavy quark jet fragments in Au+Au reactions at 200 AGeV can be simultaneously accounted for within leading order AdS/CFT holography with a common large t'Hooft coupling $λ=g^2_{YM} N_c \sim 30$. In contrast, weakly coupled quark-gluon plasma models have so far failed to describe the observed correlation between these soft and hard observables even for couplings extrapolated to $α_s\sim 0.5$. We show that phenomenological applications of the classical trailing string AdS/CFT holographi…
We employ the gauge/gravity duality to study the jet quenching of light probes traversing a static yet anisotropic strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills plasma. We compute the stopping distance of an image jet induced by a massless source field, which is characterized by a massless particle falling along the null geodesic in the WKB approximation, in an anisotropic dual geometry introduced by Mateos and Trancancelli. At mid and large anisotropic regimes, the stopping distances of a probe traveling in the anisotropic plasma along various orientations are suppressed compared to those…
We employ the string/gauge theory correspondence to study properties of strongly coupled quark-gluon plasmas in thermal gauge theories with a large number of colors and flavors. In particular, we analyze non-critical string duals of conformal (S)QCD, as well as ten dimensional wrapped fivebrane duals of SQCD-like theories. We study general properties of the dual plasmas, including the drag force exerted on a probe quark and the jet quenching parameter. We find that these plasma observables depend on the number of colors and flavors in the ``QCD dual''; in particular, we find that the jet quenc…
We extend our analysis of a IIB supergravity solution dual to a spatially anisotropic finite-temperature N=4 super Yang-Mills plasma. The solution is static, possesses an anisotropic horizon, and is completely regular. The full geometry can be viewed as a renormalization group flow from an AdS geometry in the ultraviolet to a Lifshitz-like geometry in the infrared. The anisotropy can be equivalently understood as resulting from a position-dependent theta-term or from a non-zero number density of dissolved D7-branes. The holographic stress tensor is conserved and anisotropic. The presence of a …
In this paper we use the AdS/CFT correspondence to compute the jet-quenching parameter in a N=2 thermal plasma. We consider the general three-charge black hole and discuss some special cases. We add a constant electric field to the background and find the effect of the electric field on the jet-quenching parameter. Also we include higher derivative terms and obtain the first-order correction for the jet-quenching parameter.
We calculate the static potential, the drag force and the jet quenching parameter in strongly coupled anisotropic N=4 super Yang-Mills plasma. We find that the jet quenching is in general enhanced in presence of anisotropy compared to the isotropic case and that its value depends strongly on the direction of the moving quark and the direction along which the momentum broadening occurs. The jet quenching is strongly enhanced for a quark moving along the anisotropic direction and momentum broadening happens along the transverse one. The parameter gets lower for a quark moving along the transvers…
We study the conductivity and shear viscosity tensors of a strongly coupled N=4 super-Yang-Mills plasma which is kept anisotropic by a theta parameter that depends linearly on one of the spatial dimensions. Its holographic dual is given by an anisotropic axion-dilaton-gravity background and has recently been proposed by Mateos and Trancanelli as a model for the pre-equilibrium stage of quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions. By applying the membrane paradigm which we also check by numerical evaluation of Kubo formula and lowest lying quasinormal modes, we find that the shear viscosity pure…
Dark-matter particles like neutralinos should decouple from the hot cosmic plasma at temperatures of about 40 GeV. Later they can annihilate each other into standard-model particles, which are injected into the dense primordial plasma and quickly loose energy. This process is similar to jet quenching in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, actively studied in RHIC and LHC experiments. Using empirical information from heavy-ion experiments I show that the cosmological (anti)quark and gluon jets are damped very quickly until the plasma remains in the deconfined phase. The charged hadron and l…
We calculate the drag force experienced by an infinitely massive quark propagating at constant velocity through an anisotropic, strongly coupled N=4 plasma by means of its gravity dual. We find that the gluon cloud trailing behind the quark is generally misaligned with the quark velocity, and that the latter is also misaligned with the force. The drag coefficient $μ$ can be larger or smaller than the corresponding isotropic value depending on the velocity and the direction of motion. In the ultra-relativistic limit we find that generically $μ\propto p$. We discuss the conditions under which th…
Starting from the observation that soft rescattering of hard scattered partons from the colour charged remnant plays an important role in proton-proton collisions a similar model for soft scatterings in a quark-gluon plasma was constructed and implemented as a Monte Carlo event generator. The main emphasis was put on the question to what extend these soft scatterings can contribute to the energy loss that an energetic parton suffers, when it traverses a quark-gluon plasma. It was found that the soft scattering can account for up to 50% of the observed energy loss. Furthermore, it was investiga…
We compute the jet quenching parameter $\hat q$ of QCD plasma in the presence of strong magnetic field in both weakly and strongly coupled regimes. In weakly coupled regime, we compute $\hat q$ in perturbative QCD at complete leading order (that is, leading log as well as the constant under the log) in QCD coupling constant $α_s$, assuming the hierarchy of scales $α_s eB\ll T^2\ll eB$. We consider two cases of jet orientations with respect to the magnetic field: 1) the case of jet moving parallel to the magnetic field, 2) the case jet moving perpendicular to the magnetic field. In the former c…
Jet quenching in high-energy heavy-ion collisions can be used to probe properties of hot and dense quark-gluon plasma. We provide a brief introduction to the concept and framework for the study of jet quenching. Different approaches and implementation of multiple scattering and parton energy loss are discussed. Recent progresses in the theoretical and phenomenological studies of jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC are reviewed.
We consider the backreaction of the fundamental flavor degrees of freedom on the AdS$_5$-Schwarz background, and calculate their contributions to the shear viscosity and jet-quenching parameter of the thermal quark-gluon plasma.
Jet quenching has been used successfully as a hard probe to study properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in high-energy heavy-collisions at both the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We will review recent progresses in theoretical and phenomenological studies of jet quenching with jet transport models. Special emphasis is given to effects of jet-induced medium response on a wide variety of experimental measurements and their implication on extracting transport properties of the QGP in heavy-ion collisions.
We calculate the yield and elliptic flow of mid-rapidity dileptons emitted from the quark-gluon plasma generated in Pb-Pb collisions at LHC. We use relativistic anisotropic hydrodynamics for the 3+1 dimensional evolution of the quark-gluon plasma and convolve this with the momentum-anisotropic local rest frame production rate for dileptons. The effects of momentum anisotropy of the quark distribution functions, viscosity to entropy density ratio, centrality of the collisions, and initial momentum anisotropy on the results are investigated and discussed.
We study the energy loss of a rotating infinitely massive quark moving, at constant velocity, through an anisotropic strongly-coupled N=4 plasma from holography. It is shown that, similar to the isotropic plasma, the energy loss of the rotating quark is due to either the drag force or radiation with a continuous crossover from drag-dominated regime to the radiation dominated regime. We find that the anisotropy has a significant effect on the energy loss of the heavy quark, specially in the crossover regime. We argue that the energy loss due to radiation in anisotropic media is less than the is…
We calculate the nuclear modification factor for RHIC and LHC conditions accounting for the radiative and collisional parton energy loss with the running coupling constant.We find that the RHIC data can be explained both in the scenario with the chemically equilibrium quark-gluon plasma and purely gluonic plasma with slightly different thermal suppression of the coupling constant. The role of the parton energy gain due to gluon absorption is also investigated. Our results show that the energy gain gives negligible effect.
The azimuthal anisotropy of high-pt particle production in non-central heavy ion collisions is among the most promising observables of partonic energy loss in an azimuthally non-symmetric volume of quark-gluon plasma. We discuss the implications of nuclear geometry for the models of partonic energy loss in the context of recent RHIC data and consequences for observation of jet quenching at the LHC.
Within the framework of Boltzmann transport equation with a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) collisional kernel, we study the wake potential induced by fast partons traveling through the high-temperature QCD plasma which is anisotropic in momentum-space. We calculate the dielectric response function of a collisional anisotropic quark-gluon plasma (AQGP) for small $ξ$ (anisotropic parameter) limit. Using this, the wake potential for various combinations of the anisotropy parameter ($ξ$) and the collision rate ($ν$) is evaluated both for parallel and perpendicular directions of motion of the fast par…
Using the Berry-curvature modified kinetic equation we study instabilities in anisotropic chiral plasmas. It is demonstrated that even for a very small value of anisotropic parameter the chiral-imbalance instability is strongly modified. The instability is enhanced when the modes propagates in the direction parallel to the anisotropy vector and it is strongly suppressed when the modes propagate in the perpendicular direction. Further the instabilities in the jet-plasma system is also investigated. For the case when the modes are propagating in direction parallel to the stream velocity we find …
We generalize the hard-thermal-loop effective action of the equilibrium quark-gluon plasma to a non-equilibrium system which is space-time homogeneous but for which the parton momentum distribution is anisotropic. We show that the manifestly gauge-invariant Braaten-Pisarski form of the effective action can be straightforwardly generalized and we verify that it then generates all n-point functions following from collisionless gauge-covariant transport theory for a homogeneous anisotropic plasma. On the other hand, the Taylor-Wong form of the hard-thermal-loop effective action has a more complic…
