Jets in medium - what RHIC and LHC measurements of R_AA and I_AA can teach about the parton-medium interaction

Abstract

High P_T observables associated with hard pQCD processes are regarded as tomographic probes of the medium created in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. Unfortunately, tomography is unexpectedly complicated in practice due to model uncertainties and the highly averaged nature of many observables. However, a systematic comparison study demanding a simultaneous description of many observables within the same framework is sufficiently powerful to rule out a large fraction of conjectured models about the physics mechanism of parton-medium interaction. From this study, it can be inferred that the relevant mechanism is likely to be perturbatively tractable medium-induced radiation with a small component of elastic energy transfer into the medium.

4 pages, 1 figure, talk given at the XLI International Symposium of Multiparticle Dynamics, 26-30 September 2011, Miyajima, Hiroshima, Japan