Parton Propagation and Fragmentation in QCD Matter

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in understanding how partons propagate, interact, and fragment in cold and hot QCD matter, integrating experimental data with theoretical models and outlining future research directions.

Contribution

It synthesizes experimental results and theoretical frameworks for parton behavior in QCD matter, highlighting current challenges and future experimental prospects.

Findings

Experimental data on high-energy hadron production in various collisions

Comparison of theoretical models with experimental observations

Identification of open issues in parton propagation and fragmentation

Abstract

We review recent progress in the study of parton propagation, interaction and fragmentation in both cold and hot strongly interacting matter. Experimental highlights on high-energy hadron production in deep inelastic lepton-nucleus scattering, proton-nucleus and heavy-ion collisions, as well as Drell-Yan processes in hadron-nucleus collisions are presented. The existing theoretical frameworks for describing the in-medium interaction of energetic partons and the space-time evolution of their fragmentation into hadrons are discussed and confronted to experimental data. We conclude with a list of theoretical and experimental open issues, and a brief description of future relevant experiments and facilities.