From EMC- and Cronin-effects to signals of quark-gluon plasma

TL;DR

This paper develops a unitarized evolution equation to explain EMC- and Cronin-effects, analyzes gluon distributions in nuclei, and identifies a critical energy for jet quenching in heavy ion collisions.

Contribution

It introduces an alternative form of the GLR-MQ-ZRS equation and applies it to analyze nuclear effects and energy loss in heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Identification of a universal critical energy $E_c\,\sim 10\,GeV$ for jet energy loss

Demonstration of the role of shadowing and antishadowing in nuclear suppression

Simulation of fractional energy loss consistent with RHIC and LHC data

Abstract

The EMC- and Cronin-effects are explained by a unitarized evolution equation, where the shadowing and antishadowing corrections are dynamically produced by gluon fusions. For this sake, an alternative form of the GLR-MQ-ZRS equation is derived. The resulting integrated and unintegrated gluon distributions in proton and nuclei are used to analyze the contributions of the initial parton distributions to the nuclear suppression factor in heavy ion collisions. A simulation of the fractional energy loss is extracted from the RHIC and LHC data, where the contributions of the nuclear shadowing and antishadowing effects are considered. We find a rapid crossover from week energy loss to strong energy loss at a universal critical energy of gluon jet $E_c\sim 10 GeV$.