Introductory lectures on jet quenching in heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions, including derivation of gluon radiation spectra, phenomenological applications, and insights from AdS/CFT correspondence, highlighting recent advances and future directions.

Contribution

It offers a detailed derivation of the medium-induced gluon radiation spectrum and compares theoretical predictions with experimental data, integrating insights from AdS/CFT methods.

Findings

Derivation of the full gluon radiation spectrum in medium

Comparison of theoretical models with experimental data

Insights into medium parameters from AdS/CFT correspondence

Abstract

Jet quenching has become an essential signal for the characterization of the medium formed in experiments of heavy-ion collisions. After a brief introduction to the field, we present the full derivation of the medium-induced gluon radiation spectrum, starting from the diagrammatical origin of the Wilson lines and the medium averages and including all intermediate steps. The application of this spectrum to actual phenomenological calculations is then presented, making comparisons with experimental data and indicating some improvements of the formalism to the future LHC program. The last part of the lectures reviews calculations based on the AdS/CFT correspondence on the medium parameters controlling the jet quenching phenomenon.