Collisional energy losses in relativistic nuclear collisions within an effective quasiparticle model

Abstract

We investigate the collisional energy losses of the fast gluons and light quarks in quark-gluon plasma produced in central $(\mathrm{Au}+\mathrm{Au})$ collisions at at energies currently available at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) $(\sqrt{{s}_{\mathit{NN}}}=200 \mathrm{GeV})$. We use the effective quasiparticle model for investigation of physical characteristic of expanding plasma. We take into account the possibility of hot glue production at the first stage. We calculate these energy losses and compare them with radiative energy losses of gluons and quarks in an analogous model. We show that radiative energy losses exceed considerably the collisional energy losses.