Barbara Betz, Miklos Gyulassy
Recent data on the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ of jet fragments in 2.76 ATeV Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) indicate that the jet-medium coupling in a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is reduced at LHC energies and not compatible with the coupling deduced from data at the Relativistic Hadron Collider (RHIC). We estimate the reduction factor from a combined fit to the available data on $R_{AA}(\sqrt{s},p_T,b)$ and the elliptic flow $v_2(\sqrt{s},p_T,b)$ at $\sqrt{s}=0.2,2.76$ ATeV over a transverse momentum range $p_T\sim 10-100$ GeV and a broad impact parameter, b, range. We use a simple analytic "polytrop" model ($dE/dx=- \kappa E^{a} x^z T^{c}$) to investigate the dynamical jet-energy loss model dependence. Varying a=0-1 interpolates between weakly-coupled and strongly-coupled models of jet-energy dependence while z=0-2 covers a wide range of possible jet-path dependencies from elastic and radiative to holographic string mechanisms. Our fit to LHC data indicates an approximate 60% reduction of the coupling $\kappa$ from RHIC to LHC and excludes energy-loss models characterized by a jet-energy exponent with a>1/3. In particular, the rapid rise of $R_{AA}$ with $p_T\ge 10$ GeV combined with the slow variation of the asymptotic $v_2(p_T)$ at the LHC rules out popular exponential geometric optics models (a=1). The LHC data are compatible with $0\leq a\leq 1/3$ pQCD-like energy-loss models where the jet-medium coupling is reduced by approximately 10% between RHIC and LHC.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0281
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