Higher-order corrections to heavy-quark jet quenching

Abstract

We calculate higher-order corrections to the quenching factor of heavy-quark jets due to hard, in-medium splittings in the framework of the BDMPS-Z formalism. These corrections turn out to be sensitive to a single mass-scale $m_\ast = (\hat q L)^{1/2}$, where $\hat q$ is the medium transport coefficient and $L$ the path length, and allow to draw a distinction between the way light, with $m < m_\ast$ (in contrast to massless $m=0$), and genuinely heavy, with $m > m_\ast$, quark jets are quenched in the medium. We show that the corrections to the quenching factor at high energies are double-logarithmic and qualitatively of the same order as for the massless quark jet.