Stopping distance for high energy jets in weakly-coupled quark-gluon plasmas

TL;DR

This paper derives a next-to-leading-order formula for the stopping distance of high-energy quarks and gluons in weakly-coupled quark-gluon plasmas, providing a basis for understanding jet quenching.

Contribution

It introduces a simple, next-to-leading-order formula for the stopping distance of high-energy partons in weakly-coupled plasmas, including gluons, with potential for extension to strong coupling.

Findings

Derived a formula for quark stopping distance to next-to-leading-order.

Provided a leading-log estimate for gluon stopping distance.

Highlighted the theoretical advantage of stopping distance over energy loss rates.

Abstract

We derive a simple formula for the stopping distance for a high-energy quark traveling through a weakly-coupled quark gluon plasma. The result is given to next-to-leading-order in an expansion in inverse logarithms ln(E/T), where T is the temperature of the plasma. We also define a stopping distance for gluons and give a leading-log result. Discussion of stopping distance has a theoretical advantage over discussion of energy loss rates in that stopping distances can be generalized to the case of strong coupling, where one may not speak of individual partons.