Mass Hierarchy of Collisional Energy Loss

Rodion Kolevatov

Published 2008-12-03Version 1

Collisional parton energy loss is revisited within a simple model assuming incoherent elastic scattering of on-shell projectile partons on partonic constituents of the QGP with HTL screening. The thermal motion of plasma particles is carefully taken into account. Results on $dE/dx$ are found to be consistent with other authors. There is a significant discrepancy in the energy loss pattern for the cases with thermal motion on and off, which illustrates the importance of taking the kinematics into account exactly. The dependence on the mass of the partons forming the plasma is included in the calculations and its influence on the collisional energy loss is studied. The mass hierarchy of collisional energy loss is found to have a strong dependence on the mass introduced for plasma particles. Due to difference in the mass hierarchy with radiative energy loss, the collisional one when included increases the relative suppression of heavy quarks compared to light quarks.