Theory summary. Hard Probes 2012

Abstract

I provide a summary of the theoretical talks in Hard Probes 2012 together with some personal thoughts about the present and the future of the field. Keywords: Hard Probes 2012The second nuclear run at the LHC, in 2011, produced fifteen times more luminosity than the first one in 2010. This higher precision data, first showed in this conference, marks the beginning of the new studies of hard probes of the hot and dense matter produced in heavy-ion collisions. The precision of the data is now often smaller than the theoretical uncertainties, reaching higher virtualities where the use of perturbative QCD techniques are under better control. New observables as reconstructed jets, or more systematics as the case of the different quarkonium states, call for new theoretical developments. Some of these developments started to be developed in the last years and are at a stage of being usable to phenomenological studies: new understanding of the in-medium parton shower; Monte Carlo codes; developments in quarkonia in-medium in lattice and effective theories or potential models; the knowledge of the initial conditions and the role of saturation, etc. In any of these fields, the theoretical progress in the last years, as reported in this conference, is very remarkable. Based on these rapid developments, an understanding of the experimental data of the first LHC running period, as well as the corresponding one from RHIC, based on solid calculations can be expected before the next LHC running period starts.Here I review the theory talks presented in the Hard Probes 2012 conference in Sardinia, Italy, often providing my own point of view and where I think that progress in the coming years is both needed and more promising. The different sections are rather obvious, and, most frequently follow the different topics in the scientific program. In the list of references I only quote the talks in this conference, the relevant references can be found in the corresponding contributions.