Quantifying Properties of the QCD Matter at RHIC

Abstract

We will review recent results on quantitative description of global properties of bulk partonic matter at RHIC. These results include strangeness phase space factor of the partonic matter, azimuthal angular anisotropy $v_2$, and transverse momentum $p_T$ distributions of effective partons at the hadronization of bulk partonic matter. We present empirical constraints on parton energy loss in the high $p_T$ region ($>$ 5 GeV/c). A flat $R_{AA}$ as a function of $p_T$ at mid-rapidity implies a constant fraction of the parton energy loss ($\Delta p_T/p_T$) and the fraction reaches 25% for neutral $\pi$, charged hadrons and non-photonic electrons of heavy quark decays from central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ 200 GeV. Collision centrality dependence of $\Delta p_T/p_T$ from Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions indicates that the fraction is approximately proportional to particle rapidity density $dn/dy$ divided by the initial transverse overlapping area of the colliding nuclei. Implications on dynamics of parton energy loss will be discussed.