Parton energy loss in an expanding quark-gluon plasma: Radiative vs collisional

TL;DR

This paper compares radiative and collisional parton energy losses in an expanding quark-gluon plasma, finding radiative loss dominates at RHIC and LHC energies, with enhanced heavy quark radiative loss at high energies.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed comparison of radiative and collisional energy loss calculations using the light-cone path integral and Bjorken methods in an expanding plasma.

Findings

Collisional energy loss is small compared to radiative loss at RHIC and LHC.

Heavy quarks exhibit greater radiative energy loss than light quarks at high energies.

Radiative energy loss is the dominant mechanism in the studied conditions.

Abstract

We perform a comparison of the radiative and collisional parton energy losses in an expanding quark-gluon plasma. The radiative energy loss is calculated within the light-cone path integral approach. The collisional energy loss is calculated using the Bjorken method with an accurate treatment of the binary collision kinematics. Our numerical results demonstrate that for RHIC and LHC conditions the collisional energy loss is relatively small in comparison to the radiative one. We find an enhancement of the heavy quark radiative energy loss as compared to that of the light quarks at high energies.