Jets and photons could play an important role in finding the transport coefficients of the quark-gluon plasma. To this end we analyze their interaction with a non-equilibrium quark-gluon plasma. Using new field-theoretical tools we derive two-point c
orrelators for the plasma which show how instabilities evolve in time. This allows us, for the first time, to derive finite rates of interaction with the medium. We furthermore show that coherent, long-wavelength instability fields in the Abelian limit do not modify the rate of photon emission or jet-medium interaction.
Brief review of the hadronic probes that are used to diagnose the quark-gluon plasma produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions and interrogate its properties. Emphasis is placed on probes that have significantly impacted our understanding of the
nature of the quark-gluon plasma and confirmed its formation.
We employ new field-theoretical tools to study photons and jets in a non-equilibrium quark-gluon plasma. Jet broadening and photon emission takes place through radiation which is suppressed by repeated and coherent interaction with the medium. We ana
lyze this physics in an anisotropic plasma such as is created in the early stages of heavy-ion collisions. The anisotropy introduces an angular dependence in radiation and reduces its overall rate. This can affect phenomenological predictions of the rapidity dependence and angular flow of jets and photons.
We study the evolution of the quark-gluon composition of the plasma created in ultra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions (uRHICs) employing a partonic transport theory that includes both elastic and inelastic collisions plus a mean fields dynamics asso
ciated to the widely used quasi-particle model. The latter, able to describe lattice QCD thermodynamics, implies a chemical equilibrium ratio between quarks and gluons strongly increasing as $Trightarrow T_c$, the phase transition temperature. Accordingly we see in realistic simulations of uRHICs a rapid evolution from a gluon dominated initial state to a quark dominated plasma close to $T_c$. The quark to gluon ratio can be modified by about a factor of $sim 20$ in the bulk of the system and appears to be large also in the high $p_T$ region. We discuss how this aspect, often overflown, can be important for a quantitative study of several key issues in the QGP physics: shear viscosity, jet quenching, quarkonia suppression. Furthermore a bulk plasma made by more than $80%$ of quarks plus antiquarks provides a theoretical basis for hadronization via quark coalescence.
We study charm production in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions by using the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach. The initial charm quarks are produced by the Pythia event generator tuned to fit the transverse momentum spectr
um and rapidity distribution of charm quarks from Fixed-Order Next-to-Leading Logarithm (FONLL) calculations. The produced charm quarks scatter in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) with the off-shell partons whose masses and widths are given by the Dynamical Quasi-Particle Model (DQPM) which reproduces the lattice QCD equation-of-state in thermal equilibrium. The relevant cross section are calculated in a consistent way by employing the effective propagators and couplings from the DQPM. Close to the critical energy density of the phase transition, the charm quarks are hadronized into $D$ mesons through coalescence and/or fragmentation depending on transverse momentum. The hadronized $D$ mesons then interact with the various hadrons in the hadronic phase with cross sections calculated in an effective lagrangian approach with heavy-quark spin symmetry. Finally, the nuclear modification factor $rm R_{AA}$ and the elliptic flow $v_2$ of $D^0$ mesons from PHSD are compared with the experimental data from the STAR Collaboration for Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{rm NN}}$ =200 GeV. We find that in the PHSD the energy loss of $D$ mesons at high $p_T$ can be dominantly attributed to partonic scattering while the actual shape of $rm R_{AA}$ versus $p_T$ reflects the heavy quark hadronization scenario, i.e. coalescence versus fragmentation. Also the hadronic rescattering is important for the $rm R_{AA}$ at low $p_T$ and enhances the $D$-meson elliptic flow $v_2$.