High momentum lepton pairs from jet-plasma interactions

Abstract

We discuss the emission of high momentum lepton pairs (p_T>4 GeV) with low invariant masses (M << p_T) in central Au+Au collisions at RHIC (\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200 GeV). The spectra of dileptons produced through interactions of quark and antiquark jets with the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) have been calculated. Annihilation and Compton scattering processes, as well as processes benefitting from collinear enhancement, including Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effects, are calculated and convolved with a one dimensional hydrodynamic expansion. The jet-induced contributions are compared to thermal dilepton emission and Drell-Yan processes, and are found to dominate around p_T=4 GeV.

Parallel talk given at QM2006, Shanghai November 2006. 4 pages, 3 figures