No Arabic abstract
We present a new expansion scheme to compute the rate for parton splittings in dense and finite QCD media. In contrast to the standard opacity expansion, our expansion is performed around the harmonic oscillator whose characteristic frequency depends on the typical transverse momentum scale generated in the splitting. The first two orders account for the high frequency regime that is dominated by single hard scatterings together with the regime of multiple soft scatterings at low frequency. This work generalizes the findings of Ref. cite{Mehtar-Tani:2019tvy} beyond the leading logarithmic approximation allowing to account also for the Bethe-Heitler regime and compare to the full numerical results from Ref. cite{CaronHuot:2010bp}. We investigate the sensitivity of our results to varying the separation scale that defines the leading order. Finally, the application to Monte Carlo event generators is discussed.
We revisit the calculation of the medium-induced gluon radiative spectrum and propose a novel expansion scheme that encompasses the two known analytic limits: i) the high frequency regime dominated by a single hard scattering that corresponds to the leading order in the standard opacity expansion, ii) the low frequency regime that is dominated by multiple soft scatterings. Our approach is based on expanding around the harmonic oscillator instead of vacuum in the leading logarithmic approximation. We compute the first two orders in this improved opacity expansion and show that they account for the aforementioned limits.
When an energetic parton propagates in a hot and dense QCD medium it loses energy by elastic scatterings or by medium-induced gluon radiation. The gluon radiation spectrum is suppressed at high frequency due to the LPM effect and encompasses two regimes that are known analytically: at high frequencies $omega >omega_c = hat q L^2$, where $hat q $ is the jet quenching transport coefficient and $L$ the length of the medium, the spectrum is dominated by a single hard scattering, whereas the regime $omega <omega_c$ is dominated by multiple low momentum transfers. In this paper, we extend a recent approach (dubbed the Improved Opacity Expansion (IOE)), which allows an analytic (and systematic) treatment beyond the multiple soft scattering approximation, matching this result with the single hard emission spectrum. We calculate in particular the NNLO correction analytically and numerically and show that it is strongly suppressed compared to the NLO indicating a fast convergence of the IOE scheme and thus, we conclude that it is sufficient to truncate the series at NLO. We also propose a prescription to compare the GW and the HTL potentials and relate their parameters for future phenomenological works.
We calculate the fully differential medium-induced radiative spectrum at next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy within the Improved Opacity Expansion (IOE) framework. This scheme allows us to gain analytical control of the radiative spectrum at low and high gluon frequencies simultaneously. The high frequency regime can be obtained in the standard opacity expansion framework in which the resulting power series diverges at the characteristic frequency $omega_csim hat q L^2$. In the IOE, all orders in opacity are resumed systematically below $omega_c$ yielding an asymptotic series controlled by logarithmically suppressed remainders down to the thermal scale $T ll omega_c$, while matching the opacity expansion at high frequency. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the IOE at NLO accuracy reproduces the characteristic Coulomb tail of the single hard scattering contribution as well as the Gaussian distribution resulting from multiple soft momentum exchanges. Finally, we compare our analytic scheme with a recent numerical solution, that includes a full resummation of multiple scatterings, for LHC-inspired medium parameters. We find a very good agreement both at low and high frequencies showcasing the performance of the IOE which provides for the first time accurate analytic formulas for radiative energy loss in the relevant perturbative kinematic regimes for dense media.
We investigate the radiative break-up of a highly energetic quark or gluon in a high-temperature QCD plasma. Within an inertial range of momenta $T ll omega ll E$, where $E$ denotes the energy of the original hard parton (jet) and $T$ the temperature of of the medium, we find that, as a result of the turbulent nature of the underlying parton cascade, the quark to gluon ratio of the soft fragments tends to a universal constant value that is independent of the initial conditions. We discuss implications of this result to jet quenching physics and the problem of thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma in heavy ion collisions.
We map the spectrum of $1to 2$ parton splittings inside a medium characterized by a transport coefficient $hat q$ onto the kinematical Lund plane, taking into account the finite formation time of the process. We discuss the distinct regimes arising in this map for in-medium splittings, pointing out the close correspondence to a semi-classical description in the limit of hard, collinear radiation with short formation times. Although we disregard any modifications of the original parton kinematics in course of the propagation through the medium, subtle modifications to the radiation pattern compared to the vacuum baseline can be traced back to the physics of color decoherence and accumulated interactions in the medium. We provide theoretical support to vacuum-like emissions inside the medium by delimiting the regions of phase space where it is dominant, identifying also the relevant time-scales involved. The observed modifications are shown to be quite general for any dipole created in the medium.