Angular-ordered parton showers with medium-modified splitting functions

TL;DR

This paper integrates medium-modified Altarelli-Parisi splitting functions into the HERWIG angular-ordered parton shower to study jet quenching effects in heavy-ion collisions, showing significant medium-induced modifications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel implementation of medium-modified splitting functions within the HERWIG framework, preserving angular ordering for improved jet quenching modeling.

Findings

Medium-induced effects significantly alter transverse momentum, angle, and energy distributions.

Comparison shows differences with virtuality-ordered cascade implementations.

Results highlight the importance of angular ordering in medium-modified parton showers.

Abstract

Modified Altarelli-Parisi splitting functions were recenty proposed to model multi-parton radiation in a dense medium and describe jet quenching, one of most striking features of heavy-ion collisions. We implement medium-modified splitting functions in the HERWIG parton shower algorithm, which satisfies the angular ordering prescription, and present a few parton-level results, such as transverse momentum, angle and energy-fraction distributions, which exhibit remarkable medium-induced effects. We also comment on the comparison with respect to the results yielded by other implementations of medium-modified splitting functions in the framework of virtuality-ordered parton cascades.