Energy loss of a heavy quark produced in a finite size medium Abstract: We study the medium-induced energy loss −∆E 0 (L p ) suffered by a heavy quark produced at initial time in a quark-gluon plasma, and escaping the plasma after travelling the distance L p . The heavy quark is treated classically, and within the same framework −∆E 0 (L p ) consistently includes: the loss from standard collisional processes, initial bremsstrahlung due to the sudden acceleration of the quark, and transition radiation. The radiative loss induced by rescatterings −∆E rad (L p ) is not included in our study. For a ultrarelativistic heavy quark with momentum p 10 GeV, and for a finite plasma with L p 5 fm, the loss −∆E 0 (L p ) is strongly suppressed compared to the stationary collisional contribution −∆E coll (L p ) ∝ L p . Our results support that −∆E rad is the dominant contribution to the heavy quark energy loss (at least for L p 5 fm), as indeed assumed in most of jet-quenching analyses. However they might raise some question concerning the RHIC data on large p ⊥ electron spectra.
Abstract. We study the energy loss of an energetic heavy quark produced in a high temperature quark-gluon plasma and travelling a finite distance before emerging in the vacuum. While the retardation time of purely collisional energy loss is found to be of the order of the Debye screening length, we find that the contributions from transition radiation and the Ter-Mikayelian effect do not compensate, leading to a energy loss. reduction of the zeroth order (in an opacity expansion) energy loss.
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