Perturbative versus non-perturbative aspects of jet quenching: in-medium breaking of color coherence

Abstract

The quenching of jets (and high-pT particle spectra) observed in heavy-ion collisions is interpreted as due to the energy lost by hard partons crossing the Quark Gluon Plasma. Here we review recent efforts to include in its modeling important qualitative features of QCD, like the correlations in multiple gluon emissions and the color-flow pattern in parton branchings. In particular, the modification of color connections among the partons of a shower developing in the presence of a medium is a generic occurrence accompanying parton energy-loss. We show how this effect can leave its fingerprints at the hadronization stage, leading by itself to a softening of hadron spectra and to an enhanced production of soft particles in jet-fragmentation.