Higher-order corrections to heavy-quark jet quenching

Abstract

We calculate higher-order corrections to the quenching factor of heavy-quark jets due to hard, in-medium splittings in the framework of the BDMPS-Z formalism. These corrections turn out to be sensitive to a single mass-scale $m_{\ast }=(\hat{q}L{)}^{1/2}$, where $\hat{q}$ is the medium transport coefficient and $L$ the path length, and allow to draw a distinction between the way light, with $m<m_{\ast }$ (in contrast to massless $m=0$), and genuinely heavy, with $m>m_{\ast }$, quark jets are quenched in the medium. We show that the corrections to the quenching factor at high energies are double-logarithmic and qualitatively of the same order as for the massless quark jet.

Comments: 31 pages, 4 figures