Characteristics of Parton Energy Loss Studied with High-p_T Particle Spectra from PHENIX

Abstract

In the first three years of the physics program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) a picture was established in which the suppression of hadrons at high transverse momenta (p_T) in central Au+Au collisions is explained by energy loss of quark and gluon jets in a medium of high color-charge density. Measurements of single particle spectra for a smaller nucleus (Cu), for different center-of-mass energies and with higher statistics were performed in the subsequent years and are used to test predictions and assumptions of jet quenching models in more detail. The measurements presented here are consistent with a parton energy loss scenario so that these models can be used to relate the observed suppression to properties of the created medium.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions: Quark Matter 2008 (QM2008), Jaipur, India, 04-10 Feb 200