Jet tomography of high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions at next-to-leading order

Abstract

We demonstrate that jet observables are highly sensitive to the characteristics of the vacuum and the in-medium QCD parton showers and propose techniques that exploit this sensitivity to constrain the mechanism of quark and gluon energy loss in strongly-interacting plasmas. As a first example, we calculate the inclusive jet cross section in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions to $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_s^3)$. Theoretical predictions for the medium-induced jet broadening and the suppression of the jet production rate due to cold and hot nuclear matter effects in Au+Au and Cu+Cu reactions at RHIC are presented.

Comments: 4 pages, 3 eps figures, 1 table. As published in PRL.