Interference between initial and final state radiation in a QCD medium

Abstract

We investigate the color coherence pattern between initial and final state radiation in the presence of a QCD medium. We derive the medium-induced gluon spectrum of an "asymptotic" parton which suffers a hard scattering and subsequently crosses the medium. The angular distribution of the induced gluon spectrum is modified when one includes interference terms between the incoming and the outgoing parton at finite angle between them. The coherent, incoherent and soft limits of the medium-induced gluon spectrum are studied. In the soft limit, we provide a simple and intuitive probabilistic picture which could be of interest for Monte Carlo implementations. The configuration studied here may have phenomenological consequences in high energy nuclear collisions.