Stopping distance for high energy jets in weakly-coupled quark-gluon plasmas

Abstract

We derive a simple formula for the stopping distance for a high-energy quark traveling through a weakly-coupled quark gluon plasma. The result is given to next-to-leading-order in an expansion in inverse logarithms ln(E/T), where T is the temperature of the plasma. We also define a stopping distance for gluons and give a leading-log result. Discussion of stopping distance has a theoretical advantage over discussion of energy loss rates in that stopping distances can be generalized to the case of strong coupling, where one may not speak of individual partons.

20 pages, 4 figures [change from v1: fixed embarrassing reference error]