Hard parton damping in hot QCD

The gluon and quark collisional widths in hot QCD plasmas are discussed with emphasis on temperatures near Tc, where the coupling is large. Considering the effect on the entropy, which is known from lattice calculations, it is argued that the width of the partons, which in the perturbative limit is given by gamma ~ g^2 ln(1/g) T, should be sizeable at intermediate temperatures but has to be small close to Tc. This behavior implies a substantial reduction of the radiative energy loss of jets near Tc.Comment: invitetd talk given at 'Hot Quarks 04', July 18-24 2004, Taos Valley, NM, US

Resummation of the QCD thermodynamic potential

It is argued why thermodynamic approximations in terms of dressed propagators may, at larger coupling strength, be better behaved than perturbative results, and why in hot QCD the hard thermal loop approximation of the thermodynamic potential cannot be expected to work close to the phase transition.Comment: 5 pages. Talk given at `Statistical QCD', Bielefeld, August 26-30, 200

Collisional jet quenching becomes probable

It was argued recently that loop corrections to tree-level amplitudes are essential in the discussion of the collisional energy loss of energetic partons in the hot quark gluon plasma: Instead of $dE_{\rm coll}^B/dx \sim \alpha^2 T^2 \ln(ET/m_D^2)$, as first derived by Bjorken (assuming a constant $\alpha$), the mean energy loss actually behaves as $dE_{\rm coll}/dx \sim \alpha(m_D^2)T^2$. Here we calculate, within this resummation-improved framework, the probability distribution functions (`quenching weights') of the collisional energy loss. First results from a Monte Carlo implementation of this probabilistic collisional quenching shed new light on the interpretation of jet suppression in heavy ion collisions.Comment: 5 figure

The QCD equation of state near T_0 within a quasi-particle model

We present a description of the equation of state of strongly interacting matter within a quasi-particle model. The model is adjusted to lattice QCD data near the deconfinement temperature $T_c$. We compare in detail the excess pressure at non-vanishing chemical potential and its expansion coefficients with two-flavor lattice QCD calculations and outline prospects of the extrapolation to large baryon density

Turning on the Charm

We argue that the strong jet quenching of heavy flavors observed in heavy-ion collisions is to a large extent due to binary scatterings in the quark-gluon plasma. It can be understood from first principles: the charm collision probability beyond logarithmic accuracy and Markov evolution.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure