2017/02/01 by Evan Bianchi, Jacob Elledge, Bianchi, Evan +9 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1702.00481
openalex publication_date 2017/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present the first attempt to extract the "x" dependence of the parton distribution function (PDF) of the quark gluon plasma (QGP). In the absence of knowledge regarding the mass of a QGP constituent, we define the new variable xN, the nucleonic momentum fraction, which represents the ratio of the momentum of the parton to that of a self-contained section of the plasma that has the mass of a nucleon. Calculations are compared to data for single hadron suppression in terms of the nuclear modification factor RAA and the azimuthal anisotropy parameter v2, as a function of transverse momentum pT, centrality and energy of the collision. It is demonstrated that the scale evolution of the QGP-PDF is responsible for the reduction in normalization of the jet transport coefficient q, between fits to Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data; a puzzle, first discovered by the JET collaboration. Best fits to data are suggestive of the presence of quasi-particles with wide dispersion relations in the QGP.