Speaker
Dr
Will Horowitz
(University of Cape Town)
Description
High momentum particles provide the most direct probe of the pertinent physics of the quark-gluon plasma produced at RHIC and LHC. We present comparisons of the latest pQCD- and AdS/CFT-based energy loss models with the newest high momentum measurements from RHIC and LHC. In contrast to the naive success of strong coupling AdS/CFT methods in describing the very small viscosity to entropy ratio extracted from hydrodynamics studies, the qualitative agreement of the weak-coupling and the disagreement of the strong-coupling calculations compared to high momentum observables suggest that the dominant quark-gluon plasma physics is best described using perturbative QCD methods. Future measurements may hold the key to understanding this potential crossover between strong and weak coupling dynamics.
Primary author
Dr
Will Horowitz
(University of Cape Town)
