Jet Quenching in The Most Vortical Fluid: A Holographic Approach

Abstract

The STAR collaboration at the RHIC facility has recently announced the exciting discovery of direct evidence for extremely large vorticity in the Quark-Gluon Plasma generated in peripheral collisions, seen in the form of global polarization of $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$ hyperons. This prompts the question: does this vorticity have any effect on other observed phenomena, such as jet quenching? Using a simple gauge-gravity model, we suggest that such an effect may be detectable, in data from near-future experiments, as a reduction in the jet quenching parameter. This is predicted to be most prominent in collisions corresponding to a narrow range of centralities around $10 \%$. The relative reduction (compared to collisions at zero or, alternatively, large centrality) is predicted to behave in an unexpected and characteristic manner: the model suggests that it is independent of the impact energy.