Back-to-back correlations of high p_T hadrons in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

We investigate the suppression factor and the azimuthal correlation function for high $p_T$ hadrons in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV by using a dynamical model in which hydrodynamics is combined with explicitly traveling jets. We study the effects of parton energy loss in a hot medium, intrinsic $k_T$ of partons in a nucleus, and $p_{\perp }$ broadening of jets on the back-to-back correlations of high $p_T$ hadrons. Parton energy loss is found to be a dominant effect on the reduction of the away-side peaks in the correlation function.

Comments: 4 pages, 4 figures; version to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett