Mass Hierarchy of Collisional Energy Loss

TL;DR

This paper revisits collisional energy loss in quark-gluon plasma, emphasizing the importance of thermal motion and mass effects, and finds a significant mass hierarchy impacting heavy quark suppression.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed model accounting for plasma particle mass and thermal motion, revealing their impact on collisional energy loss patterns.

Findings

Thermal motion significantly affects energy loss calculations.

Mass hierarchy influences heavy quark suppression.

Results align with previous studies on $dE/dx$.

Abstract

Collisional parton energy loss is revisited within a simple model assuming incoherent elastic scattering of on-shell projectile partons on partonic constituents of the QGP with HTL screening. The thermal motion of plasma particles is carefully taken into account. Results on $dE/dx$ are found to be consistent with other authors. There is a significant discrepancy in the energy loss pattern for the cases with thermal motion on and off, which illustrates the importance of taking the kinematics into account exactly. The dependence on the mass of the partons forming the plasma is included in the calculations and its influence on the collisional energy loss is studied. The mass hierarchy of collisional energy loss is found to have a strong dependence on the mass introduced for plasma particles. Due to difference in the mass hierarchy with radiative energy loss, the collisional one when included increases the relative suppression of heavy quarks compared to light quarks.