MIT Libraries logoDSpace@MIT

MIT
View Item 
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • View Item
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Shining a gluon beam through quark-gluon plasma

Author(s)
Chesler, Paul Michael; Ho, Ying-Yu; Rajagopal, Krishna
Thumbnail
DownloadChesler-2012-Shining a gluon beam through quark-gluon plasma.pdf (4.907Mb)
PUBLISHER_POLICY

Publisher Policy

Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.

Terms of use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
We compute the energy density radiated by a quark undergoing circular motion in strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma. If it were in vacuum, this quark would radiate a beam of strongly coupled radiation whose angular distribution has been characterized and is very similar to that of synchrotron radiation produced by an electron in circular motion in electrodynamics. Here, we watch this beam of gluons getting quenched by the strongly coupled plasma. We find that a beam of gluons of momenta ∼q≫πT is attenuated rapidly, over a distance ∼q[superscript 1/3](πT)[superscript -4/3] in a plasma with temperature T. As the beam propagates through the plasma at the speed of light, it sheds trailing sound waves with momenta ≲πT. Presumably these sound waves would thermalize in the plasma if they were not hit soon after their production by the next pulse of gluons from the lighthouselike rotating quark. At larger and larger q, the trailing sound wave becomes less and less prominent. The outward-going beam of gluon radiation itself shows no tendency to spread in angle or to shift toward larger wavelengths, even as it is completely attenuated. In this regard, the behavior of the beam of gluons which we analyze is reminiscent of the behavior of jets produced in heavy ion collisions at the LHC which lose a significant fraction of their energy without appreciable change in their angular distribution or their momentum distribution as they plow through the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma produced in these collisions.
Date issued
2012-06
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72136
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Journal
Physical Review D
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Chesler, Paul, Ying-Yu Ho, and Krishna Rajagopal. “Shining a Gluon Beam Through Quark-gluon Plasma.” Physical Review D 85.12 (2012): 126006. © 2012 American Physical Society.
Version: Final published version
ISSN
1550-7998
1089-4918

Collections
  • MIT Open Access Articles

Browse

All of DSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

My Account

Login

Statistics

OA StatisticsStatistics by CountryStatistics by Department
MIT Libraries
PrivacyPermissionsAccessibilityContact us
MIT
Content created by the MIT Libraries, CC BY-NC unless otherwise noted. Notify us about copyright concerns.