Parton showers as sources of energy-momentum deposition in the QGP and their implication for shockwave formation at RHIC and at the LHC

Understand

We derive the distribution of energy and momentum transmitted from a primary fast parton and its medium-induced bremsstrahlung gluons to a thermalized quark-gluon plasma.

• Our calculation takes into account the important and thus far neglected effects of quantum interference between the resulting color currents.
• We use our result to obtain the rate at which energy is absorbed by the medium as a function of time and find that the rate is modified by the quantum interference between the primary parton and secondary gluons.
• This Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal type interference persists for time scales relevant to heavy ion phenomenology.