Pseudorapidity dependence of parton energy loss in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

We analyze the recent data from the BRAHMS Collaboration on the pseudorapidity dependence of nuclear modification factors in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV by using the full three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations for the density effects on parton energy loss. We first compute the transverse spectra at $\eta =0$ and 2.2, and next take a ratio $R_{\eta }=R_{AA}(\eta =2.2)/R_{AA}(\eta =0)$, where $R_{AA}$ is a nuclear modification factor. It is shown that hydrodynamic components account for $R_{\eta }\simeq 1$ at low $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ and that quenched pQCD components lead $R_{\eta }<1$ at high $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ which are consistent with the data. Strong suppression at $\eta =2.2$ is compatible with the parton energy loss in the final state.

Comments: 5 pages, 4 figures; one figure added