Jet Quenching in Heavy-Ion Collisions - The Transition Era from RHIC to LHC

Abstract

A status report on the jet quenching physics in heavy-ion collisions is given as it appears after more than 10 years of collecting and analysing data at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and ~1.5 years of physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The (theoretical) predictions and expectations before the start of the LHC program are contrasted with the most recent experimental results, focussing on the nuclear modification factor R_{AA}, the elliptic flow v_2 of high-p_T particles, and on the problem of initial conditions.