Multiple scattering and induced parton splitting lead to a medium modification of the QCD evolution for jet fragmentation functions and the final hadron spectra. Medium-induced parton splittings not only lead to energy loss of leading partons and sup
pression of leading hadron spectra, but also modify the flavor composition of a jet due to induced flavor conversion via gluon emission, quark pair production and annihilation. Through a numerical study of the medium-modified QCD evolution, leading $K^-$ strange meson spectra are found to be particularly sensitive to the induced flavor conversion in semi-inclusive deeply inelastic scatterings (SIDIS) off a large nucleus. The induced flavor conversion can lead to increased number of gluons and sea quarks in a jet and, as a consequence, enhance the leading $K^-$ spectra to counter the effect of parton energy loss in SIDIS with large momentum fractions $x_B$ where the struck quarks are mostly valence quarks of the nucleus.
Within five different approaches to parton propagation and energy loss in dense matter, a phenomenological study of experimental data on suppression of large $p_T$ single inclusive hadrons in heavy-ion collisions at both RHIC and LHC was carried out.
The evolution of bulk medium used in the study for parton propagation was given by 2+1D or 3+1D hydrodynamic models which are also constrained by experimental data on bulk hadron spectra. Values for the jet transport parameter $hat q$ at the center of the most central heavy-ion collisions are extracted or calculated within each model, with parameters for the medium properties that are constrained by experimental data on the hadron suppression factor $R_{AA}$. For a quark with initial energy of 10 GeV we find that $hat qapprox 1.2 pm 0.3$ GeV$^2$/fm at an initial time $tau_0=0.6$ fm/$c$ in Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s}=200$ GeV/n and $hat qapprox 1.9 pm 0.7 $ GeV$^2$/fm in Pb+Pb collisions at $sqrt{s}=2.76 $ TeV/n. Compared to earlier studies, these represent significant convergence on values of the extracted jet transport parameter, reflecting recent advances in theory and the availability of new experiment data from the LHC.
Modifications to quark and antiquark fragmentation functions due to quark-quark (antiquark) double scattering in nuclear medium are studied systematically up to order cal{O}(alpha_{s}^2)$ in deeply inelastic scattering (DIS) off nuclear targets. At t
he order $cal{O}(alpha_s^2)$, twist-four contributions from quark-quark (antiquark) rescattering also exhibit the Landau-Pomeranchuck-Midgal (LPM) interference feature similar to gluon bremsstrahlung induced by multiple parton scattering. Compared to quark-gluon scattering, the modification, which is dominated by $t$-channel quark-quark (antiquark) scattering, is only smaller by a factor of $C_F/C_A=4/9$ times the ratio of quark and gluon distributions in the medium. Such a modification is not negligible for realistic kinematics and finite medium size. The modifications to quark (antiquark) fragmentation functions from quark-antiquark annihilation processes are shown to be determined by the antiquark (quark) distribution density in the medium. The asymmetry in quark and antiquark distributions in nuclei will lead to different modifications of quark and antiquark fragmentation functions inside a nucleus, which qualitatively explains the experimentally observed flavor dependence of the leading hadron suppression in semi-inclusive DIS off nuclear targets. The quark-antiquark annihilation processes also mix quark and gluon fragmentation functions in the large fractional momentum region, leading to a flavor dependence of jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions.
