Quenching of High pT Hadron Spectra by Hadronic Interactions in Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC

Typically the materialization of high energetic transverse partons to hadronic jets is assumed to occur outside the reaction zone in a relativistic heavy ion collision. In contrast, a quantum mechanical estimate yields a time on the order of only a few fm/c for building up the hadronic wavefunction for jets with typical transverse momenta of pT < 10 GeV as accessible at RHIC facilities. The role of possible elastic or inelastic collisions of these high pT particles with the bulk of hadrons inside the fireball is addressed by means of an opacity expansion in the number of collisions. This analysis shows that the hadronic final state interactions can in principle account for the modification of the (moderate) high pT spectrum observed for central collisions at RHIC.