Memory effects in radiative jet energy loss

TL;DR

This paper investigates how high-momentum partons lose energy via radiation in a rapidly evolving quark-gluon plasma, showing that the radiative process closely follows medium changes.

Contribution

It introduces a non-equilibrium formalism using Schwinger Keldysh to analyze jet evolution and photon emission in dynamic media, highlighting memory effects.

Findings

Radiative behavior closely follows medium evolution.

Good agreement with quasistatic calculations.

Photon emission responds almost instantaneously to medium changes.

Abstract

In heavy-ion collisions the created quark-gluon plasma forms a quickly evolving background, leading to a time dependent radiative behavior of high momentum partons traversing the medium. We use the Schwinger Keldysh formalism to describe the jet evolution as a non-equilibrium process including the Landau-Pomeranschuk-Migdal effect. Concentrating on photon emission, a comparison of our results to a quasistatic calculation shows good agreement, leading to the conclusion that the radiative behavior follows the changes in the medium almost instantaneously.