THE COLLISIONAL AND RADIATIVE ENERGY LOSS CONTRIBUTIONS FOR THE QUENCHING FACTOR

Abstract

The contributions of radiative and collisional mechanisms for parton energy loss when it propagates inside a dense medium are calculated. The critical energy Ec, which characterizes the energy where both mechanisms contribute equally is estimated, and the quenching factor is calculated including collisional and radiative energy loss. Our results demonstrate the importance of collisional energy loss mechanism and suggest that it cannot be disregarded in the RHIC data analysis. However, the magnitude of the quenching factor is reduced by a factor smaller than two when the collisional energy loss contribution is included.