Collisional energy loss and the suppression of high $p_T$ hadrons

Abstract

We calculate nuclear suppression factor ($R_{AA}$) for light hadrons by taking only the elastic processes and argue that in the measured $p_T$ domain of RHIC, collisional rather than the radiative processes is the dominant mechanism for partonic energy loss.

Comments: Presented at the international conference on strong and electroweak matter 2006, May 10-13, Brookhaven National Laboratory