Parton energy loss in an expanding quark-gluon plasma: Radiative vs collisional

Abstract

We perform a comparison of the radiative and collisional parton energy losses in an expanding quark-gluon plasma. The radiative energy loss is calculated within the light-cone path integral approach. The collisional energy loss is calculated using the Bjorken method with an accurate treatment of the binary collision kinematics. Our numerical results demonstrate that for RHIC and LHC conditions the collisional energy loss is relatively small in comparison to the radiative one. We find an enhancement of the heavy quark radiative energy loss as compared to that of the light quarks at high energies.