On the evolution of jet energy and opening angle in strongly coupled plasma

Abstract

We calculate how the energy and the opening angle of jets in N = 4 SYM theory evolve as they propagate through the strongly coupled plasma of that theory. We define the rate of energy loss dE[subscript jet]/dx and the jet opening angle in a straightforward fashion directly in the gauge theory before calculating both holographically, in the dual gravitational description. In this way, we rederive the previously known result for dE[subscript jet]/dx without the need to introduce a finite slab of plasma. We obtain a striking relationship between the initial opening angle of the jet, which is to say the opening angle that it would have had if it had found itself in vacuum instead of in plasma, and the thermalization distance of the jet. Via this relationship, we show that N = 4 SYM jets with any initial energy that have the same initial opening angle and the same trajectory through the plasma experience the same fractional energy loss. We also provide an expansion that describes how the opening angle of the N = 4 SYM jets increases slowly as they lose energy, over the fraction of their lifetime when their fractional energy loss is not yet large. We close by looking ahead toward potential qualitative lessons from our results for QCD jets produced in heavy collisions and propagating through quark-gluon plasma.