Energy loss of fast partons in a colored medium

Abstract

The study of jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions, i.e., the energy loss and modification of the parton radiation pattern that travels through a dense medium, is at the forefront of current theoretical and experimental efforts. A qualitative understanding of this phenomenon is essential for the interpretation of the data from the Large Hadron Collider and Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, as well as for the characterization of the produced medium. The aim of this thesis is to study the mechanism of parton energy loss in a colored medium, and to improve existing models based on high-energy approximations for the spectrum of single inclusive gluon radiation. Among the improvements to be explored, there is the possibility of color and momentum exchange with the surrounding medium and its implication on the formalism. The theoretical studies of this thesis will be complemented by a phenomenological study using a Monte Carlo event generator, Q-PYTHIA, that partially includes modifications in the final state radiation due to a colored medium. This will make possible to study several aspects like color coherence and color correlations within a jet, and to identify the influence of the reconstruction methods and jet quenching on experimental observables.