Jet energy loss in anisotropic plasmas meets limiting attractors

TL;DR

This paper investigates how anisotropy in plasmas affects jet energy loss, revealing that the impact is generally small and connecting the phenomenon to universal attractor dynamics in anisotropic media.

Contribution

It introduces a simple formula for estimating anisotropic effects on gluon emission energy loss and links these effects to universal attractor behavior in anisotropic plasmas.

Findings

Anisotropy slightly alters mean gluon energy loss.

The medium length dependence shows characteristics of limiting attractors.

Results connect jet energy loss to universal plasma dynamics.

Abstract

We consider the energy loss of a high-energy parton in the early anisotropic plasma in heavy-ion collisions. Working in the harmonic approximation, we compute the change in the mean energy of an emitted gluon in the presence of an anisotropic background, characterized by anisotropic jet quenching parameters $\hat q_{x}\neq \hat q_{y}$. Evaluating the resulting integrals numerically, we compare with isotropic media, and obtain a simple pocket formula to estimate the impact of anisotropy on the mean emitted gluon energy, which is generally small. We then combine our results with the values of the jet quenching parameter extracted from QCD kinetic theory simulations and show that the medium length dependence of this mean energy loss exhibits the characteristics of limiting attractors, which can be obtained by extrapolating to zero and infinite coupling. Our study thus relates energy loss of jet partons to universal dynamics of anisotropic plasmas.