Monte Carlo Simulation for Elastic Energy Loss of High-Energy Partons in Quark-Gluon Plasma

Abstract

We examine the significance of $2 \rightarrow 2$ partonic collisions as the suppression mechanism of high-energy partons in the strongly interacting medium formed in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. For this purpose, we have developed a Monte Carlo simulation describing the interactions of perturbatively produced, non-eikonally propagating high-energy partons with the quarks and gluons from the expanding QCD medium. The partonic collision rates are computed in leading-order perturbative QCD (pQCD), while three different hydrodynamical scenarios are used to model the medium. We compare our results with the suppression observed in $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV Au+Au collisions at the BNL-RHIC. We find the incoherent nature of elastic energy loss incompatible with the measured data and the effect of the initial state fluctuations small.