Theoretical developments in heavy and light flavor energy loss

Abstract

Recent developments in the many-body perturbative QCD theory of inelastic parton interactions in dense nuclear matter and the phenomenology of strongly-interacting hard probes in heavy-ion collisions are reviewed. We highlight the progress that has been made toward consistent comparison between radiative and collisional energy loss, the exploration of novel heavy flavor suppression mechanisms in the quark–gluon plasma, and the determination of the stopping power of cold nuclear matter. Future directions and opportunities for jet physics in nuclear collisions, enabled by the unprecedentedly high center-of-mass energies at the LHC, are also discussed. We propose that the physics of jet shapes and generalizations of the well-understood inclusive particle suppression in the QGP will provide a new differential, and accurate test of the underlying QCD theory and a new precision tool for jet tomography at the LHC.