Ab initio coupling of jets to collective flow in the opacity expansion approach

We calculate the leading corrections to jet momentum broadening and medium-induced branching that arise from the velocity of a moving medium at first order in opacity. These results advance our knowledge of jet quenching and demonstrate how it couples to the collective flow of the quark-gluon plasma in heavyion collisions. We also compute the leading corrections to jet momentum broadening due to transverse gradients of temperature and density. We find that the velocity effects lead to both anisotropic transverse momentum diffusion proportional to the medium velocity and anisotropic medium-induced radiation emitted preferentially in the direction of the flow. We isolate the relevant subeikonal corrections by working with jets composed of scalar particles with arbitrary color factors interacting with the medium by scalar QCD. Appropriate substitution of the color factors and light-front wave functions allow us to immediately apply the results to a range of processes including q -> qg branching in real QCD. The resulting general expressions can be directly coupled to hydrodynamic simulations on an event-by-event basis to study the correlations between jet quenching and the dynamics of various forms of nuclear matter.

Automated summary

In this study, leading corrections to jet momentum broadening and medium-induced branching at first order in opacity were calculated. It was found that velocity effects lead to anisotropic transverse momentum diffusion and anisotropic medium-induced radiation emitted preferentially in the direction of the flow. The general expressions obtained can be directly coupled to hydrodynamic simulations to study the correlations between jet quenching and the dynamics of various forms of nuclear matter.