Fast partons as a source of energy and momentum in a perturbative quark-gluon plasma

TL;DR

This paper derives how fast-moving partons deposit energy and momentum in a quark-gluon plasma, accounting for medium screening effects, to better understand jet-medium interactions in high-energy nuclear collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to calculate the space-time distribution of energy and momentum transfer from fast partons considering dielectric screening in a perturbative quark-gluon plasma.

Findings

Screening reduces the energy and momentum deposition compared to unscreened cases.

The derived distribution provides insights into jet quenching mechanisms.

The approach can be applied to improve modeling of jet-medium interactions.

Abstract

I derive the space-time distribution of energy and momentum deposited by a fast parton traversing a perturbative quark-gluon plasma by considering the fast parton as the source of an external color field interacting with the medium. I include the medium's response to screen the fast parton's color field by incorporating dielectric functions and compare to the unscreened result.