The Momentum Kick Model Description of the Near-Side Ridge and Jet Quenching
Abstract
In the momentum kick model, a near-side jet emerges near the surface, kicks medium partons, loses energy, and fragments into the trigger particle and fragmentation products. The kicked medium partons subsequently materialize as the observed ridge particles, which carry direct information on the magnitude of the momentum kick and the initial parton momentum distribution at the moment of jet-(medium parton) collisions. The initial parton momentum distribution extracted from the STAR ridge data for central AuAu collisions at sNN=200 GeV has a thermal-like transverse momentum distribution and a rapidity plateau structure with a relatively flat distribution at mid-rapidity and sharp kinematic boundaries at large rapidities. Such a rapidity plateau structure may arise from particle production in flux tubes, as color charges and anti-color charges separate at high energies. The centrality dependence of the ridge yield and the degree of jet quenching can be consistently described by the momentum kick model.