Jet evolution in Yang-Mills-Wong simulations

TL;DR

This paper investigates jet evolution in a non-Abelian plasma using Yang-Mills-Wong simulations, providing insights into energy loss, momentum broadening, and the effects of instabilities relevant for experimental observations.

Contribution

It presents the first cutoff-independent calculations of collisional energy loss and transport coefficients in a real-time lattice simulation of jet evolution in a Yang-Mills plasma.

Findings

Cutoff-independent results for dE/dx and q-hat obtained.

High-momentum partons exhibit a power-law tail in transverse momentum distribution.

Jet broadening effects from instabilities could be observed experimentally.

Abstract

We present results for collisional energy loss and momentum broadening of high momentum partons in a hot and dense non-Abelian plasma obtained by solving the coupled system of Yang-Mills-Wong equations on a lattice in real time. Including hard elastic collisions among the particles we obtain cutoff independent results for the collisional energy loss dE/dx and the transport coefficient q-hat. The latter is found to receive a sizable contribution from a power-law tail in the transverse momentum distribution of high-momentum partons. We further argue that the effect of instabilities on jet broadening should be accessible by experiment when employing jet cones with elliptical bases or studying correlations within the cone in full jet reconstruction methods.