A heuristic description of high-pT hadron production in heavy ion collisions

Abstract

Using a simplified model for in-medium dipole evolution accounting for color filtering effects we study production of hadrons at large transverse momenta $p_T$ in heavy ion collisions. In the framework of this model, several important sources of the nuclear suppression observed recently at RHIC and LHC have been analysed. A short production length of the leading hadron $l_p$ causes a strong onset of color transparency effects manifested themselves as a steep rise of the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}(p_T)$ at large hadron $p_T$'s. A dominance of quarks with higher $l_p$ leads to a weaker suppression at RHIC than the one observed at LHC. In the RHIC kinematic region we include an additional suppression factor steeply falling with $p_T$, which is tightly related to the energy conservation constraints. The latter is irrelevant at LHC up to $p_T\lesssim 70$ GeV while it causes a rather flat $p_T$ dependence of the $R_{AA}(p_T)$ factor at RHIC c.m. energy $\sqrt{s} = 200$ GeV and even an increasing suppression with $p_T$ at $\sqrt{s} = 62$ GeV. The calculations contain only a medium density adjustment, and for an initial time scale $t_0$ = 1 fm we found the energy-dependent maximal values of the transport coefficient, $\hat{q}_0 = 0.7, 1.0$ and 1.3 GeV$^2$/fm corresponding to $\sqrt{s} = 62, 200$ GeV and 2.76 TeV, respectively. We present a broad variety of predictions for the nuclear modification factor and the azimuthal asymmetry which are in a good agreement with available data from experiments at RHIC and LHC.