We compare the azimuthal correlations arising from three and two hadron production in high energy proton-proton and nucleus-nucleus collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}}=200 GeV, using the leading order matrix elements for two-to-three and two-to-two parton-processes in perturbative QCD. We first compute the two and three hadron production cross sections in mid-rapidity proton-proton collisions. Then we consider Au + Au collisions including parton energy loss using the modified fragmentation function approach. By examining the geometrical paths the hard partons follow through the medium, we show that the two away-side partons produced in two-to-three processes have in average a smaller and a greater path length than the average path length of the away-side parton in two-to-two processes. Therefore there is a large probability that in the former processes one of the particles escapes while the other gets absorbed. This effect leads to an enhancement in the azimuthal correlations of the two-to-three with respect to the two-to-two parton-processes when comparing to the same processes in proton-proton collisions since in average the particle with the shortest path length looses less energy with respect to the away side particle in two-to-two processes. We argue that this phenomenon may be responsible for the shape of the away-side in azimuthal correlations observed in mid-rapidity Au + Au collisions at RHIC.
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