Anomalous conical di-jet correlations in pQCD vs AdS/CFT

Barbara Betz, Miklos Gyulassy, Jorge Noronha, Giorgio Torrieri

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We propose an identified heavy quark jet observable to discriminate between weakly coupled pQCD and strongly coupled AdS/CFT models of quark-gluon plasma dynamics in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. These models are shown to predict qualitatively different associated hadron correlations with respect to tagged heavy quark jets. While both models feature similar far zone Mach and diffusion wakes, the far zone stress features are shown to be too weak to survive thermal broadening at hadron freeze-out. However, these models differ significantly in a near zone "Neck" region where strong chromo-fields sourced by the heavy quark jet couple to the polarizable plasma. Conical associated correlations, if any, are shown to be dominated by the jet induced transverse flow in the Neck zone and unrelated to the weak far zone wakes. Unlike in AdS/CFT, we show that the induced transverse flow in the Neck zone is too weak in pQCD to produce conical correlations after Cooper-Frye freeze-out. The observation of conical correlations violating Mach's law would favor the strongly-coupled AdS/CFT string drag dynamics, while their absence would favor weakly-coupled pQCD-based chromo-hydrodynamics.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)340-346
Number of pages7
JournalPhysics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
Volume675
Issue number3-4
DOIs
StatePublished - May 18 2009
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Anomalous conical di-jet correlations in pQCD vs AdS/CFT'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this