Elastic Energy Loss in an Expanding QGP

Abstract

The discovery of the jet quenching in central Au + Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-ion Collider (RHIC) has provided clear evidence for the formation of strongly interacting dense matter. It has been predicted to occur due to the energy loss of high energy partons that propagate through the quark gluon plasma. Since the medium is not static and it cools while expands, the strong coupling is not fixed, running with the evolution of the system. In this work, we present an investigation of the dependence on the value of the strong coupling in the parton energy loss due to elastic scatterings in a parton plasma. We analyze different prescriptions for the QCD coupling and calculate the energy and length dependence of the fractional energy loss. Moreover, the quenching factor for light and heavy quarks is estimated. We found that the predicted enhancement of heavy to light hadrons (D=p) ratio is strongly dependent on the running of the QCD coupling constant.