Parton Energy Loss in the Extremely Prolate Quark-Gluon Plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how highly energetic partons lose energy when passing through an extremely prolate quark-gluon plasma, revealing significant time and directional dependence and exceeding equilibrium energy loss.

Contribution

It introduces a method to study energy loss in unstable plasmas, specifically analyzing an extremely prolate plasma with elongated momentum distribution.

Findings

Energy loss is strongly time-dependent.

Energy loss varies significantly with direction.

Energy loss can surpass that in equilibrium plasma.

Abstract

The energy loss per unit path length of a highly energetic parton scattering elastically in a weakly coupled quark-gluon plasma is studied as an initial value problem. The approach is designed to study unstable plasmas but in the case of an equilibrium plasma the well known result is reproduced. As an example of an unstable system, an extremely prolate plasma, where the momentum distribution is infinitely elongated along one direction, is considered here. The energy loss is shown to be strongly time and directionally dependent and its magnitude can much exceed the energy loss in equilibrium plasma.