Quantum partonic transport in QCD matter

Journal Article · 17 March 2023 · Physical Review. D.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.107.l051503 · OSTI ID:1962226

Barata, João  ^[1]; Sadofyev, Andrey V.  ^[2]; Wang, Xin-Nian  ^[3]

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1. Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
2. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain); National Research Centre, Moscow (Russian Federation). Kurchatov Institute
3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

We study gradient corrections to the transport equation for energetic light partons in dense QCD environments. In the diffusion limit, the transport dynamics is solely controlled by small-angle elastic scatterings, leading to transverse momentum broadening with respect to the parton’s initial direction. Such a parton propagation is usually considered in the limit of transversely homogeneous matter. The transport processes admit a classical description and the transverse spatial dependence of the medium properties emerges only through the jet quenching parameter. In this work, we show that a gradient expansion of the all-order evolution equation for the partonic Wigner function leads to an evolution equation in the Boltzmann-diffusion form only up to the leading order in transverse gradients. At the second order in gradients, the quantum corrections associated with nonlocal interactions give rise to a novel transport that can be implemented in Monte Carlo simulations. In addition, using our results, we compute the gradient corrections to the jet quenching parameter in inhomogeneous matter.

• Research Organization: Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP); National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0012704; AC02-05CH11231; ACI-1550228; OAC-2004571
• OSTI ID: 1962226
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1991085
• Report Number(s): BNL-224589-2023-JAAM; TRN: US2403993
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D., Vol. 107, Issue 5; ISSN 2470-0010
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English