Jet Energy Loss and Mach Cones in pQCD vs. AdS/CFT

TL;DR

This paper compares jet-induced Mach cone phenomena in heavy ion collisions using weakly coupled pQCD and strongly coupled AdS/CFT models, highlighting differences in observable conical correlations after freeze-out.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of Mach cone signatures in pQCD and AdS/CFT frameworks, emphasizing the role of transverse flow in observable correlations.

Findings

Far zone stress features are too weak to survive thermal broadening.

Observable conical correlations are dominated by near zone transverse flow.

Conical correlations violating Mach's law would support AdS/CFT dynamics.

Abstract

We compare away-side hadron correlations with respect to tagged heavy quark jets computed within a weakly coupled pQCD and a strongly coupled AdS/CFT model. While both models feature similar far zone Mach and diffusion wakes, the far zone stress features are shown to be too weak to survive thermal broadening at hadron freeze-out. Observable away-side conical correlations are dominated by the jet-induced transverse flow in near zone "Neck" region, which differs significantly for both models. Unlike in AdS/CFT, the induced transverse flow in the Neck zone is too weak in pQCD to produce conical correlations after Cooper-Frye freeze-out. The observation of conical correlations violating Mach's law would favor the strongly-coupled AdS/CFT string drag dynamics, while their absence would favor weakly-coupled pQCD-based hydrodynamics.