Heavy Quark Energy Loss Through Soft QCD Scattering in the QGP

Abstract

A strong suppression of non-photonic electrons in Au+Au collisions is observed at RHIC. This is in disagreement with the expected dominance of the energy loss via gluon radiation, which predicts a much weaker suppression of heavy flavours due to the dead cone effect. However, collisional energy loss is also important, as demonstrated recently by the Soft Colour Interaction Jet Quenching model. Based on this model we show that collisional energy loss of charm quarks gives a suppression of electrons of the observed magnitude, but the contribution from beauty decays, which dominates at intermediate and large pT, results in a somewhat weaker overall suppression of electrons than observed.

6 pages, 4 figures, to be published in the poster proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (QM2006), Shanghai, China, November 14-20, 2006