Comparing energy loss phenomenology

Abstract

High-pT particle production is suppressed in heavy ion collisions due to parton energy loss in dense QCD matter. Here we present a systematic comparison of two different theoretical approximations to parton energy loss calculations: the opacity expansion and the multiple-soft scattering approximation for the simple case of a quark traversing a homogeneous piece of matter with fixed length (the TECHQM 'brick problem'), with focus on the range of parameters that is relevant for interpreting RHIC measurements of high-pT hadron suppression.

Comments: Proceedings for workshop 'High-pt at the LHC 09', Prague, submitted to Proceedings of Science. 8 pages, 3 figures Update v2: fix typos in Eq 1.2