Elastic, Inelastic, and Path Length Fluctuations in Jet Tomography

Abstract

We propose a possible perturbative QCD solution to the heavy quark tomography problem posed by recent non-photonic single electron data from central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 200$ AGeV. Jet quenching theory is extended to include (1) elastic as well as (2) inelastic parton energy losses and (3) jet path length fluctuations. The three effects combine to reduce the discrepancy between theory and the data without violating the global entropy bounds from multiplicity and elliptic flow data. We also check for consistency with the pion suppression data out to 20 GeV. Fluctuations of the geometric jet path lengths and the difference between the widths of fluctuations of elastic and inelastic energy loss play essential roles in the proposed solution.