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Shahin Iqbal

Publications and source records attributed to Shahin Iqbal.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Three Predictions for Partonic Energy Loss from Light to Heavy Ion Collisions

In July 2025 the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collided $^{16}$O$^{16}$O and $^{20}$Ne$^{20}$Ne isotopes in a quest to understand the physics of ultrarelativistic light ion collisions. One of the key motivations for this run is to discover partonic energy loss in systems with a small quark-gluon plasma (QGP). In this letter we combine a BDMPS-Z based model, a weighted path based energy loss prescription, and JEWEL together with two realistic geometries of the $^{16}$O and $^{20}$Ne isotopes. The different sizes of the ions affect the energy loss in characteristically different ways depending on the model.

nucl-th

Factorization of the triple-collinear $q \to qc\bar{c}$ splitting function at first order in opacity

In strongly ordered collinear limits, triple-collinear $1\to 3$ splitting functions factorize into products of $1\to 2$ splitting functions. Here, we investigate whether, and under which conditions, this factorization persists in a finite QCD medium. To this end, we reformulate the opacity expansion as a medium-modification of the compact Catani-Grazzini representation of collinear $1\to n$ splitting functions. We compute the fully differential medium-modified triple-collinear $q\to q c\bar{c}$ splitting function to first order in opacity and leading order in $N_c$, and show that it can be expressed as a sum of momentum-shifted vacuum $q\to q c\bar{c}$ splitting functions multiplied by simple interference factors. In vacuum, this splitting function has a single strongly ordered collinear limit, in which the invariant mass of the outgoing $c\bar{c}$ pair is much smaller than all other invariant masses. The medium-modified splitting function instead exhibits three distinct strongly ordered limits, depending on how the relevant invariant masses -- multiplied by a boost factor and interpretable as inverse formation times -- compare with the medium length. Remarkably, in all three cases the triple-collinear splitting factorizes also in the medium into a tensor product of $q\to qg$ and $g\to c\bar{c}$ splitting functions. In two of these limits, the latter are medium modified to first order in opacity. This first proof shows that factorization extends to medium-modified triple-collinear splitting functions. Lastly, we relate our results to the longstanding problem of overlapping formation times and discuss their implications for jet-quenching parton showers based on medium-modified $1\to 2$ splittings. We also outline further applications of our formalism and note that our results may inform future phenomenological studies of spin (de)correlations in final-state radiation in dense QCD matter.

hep-ph

Extremely high-energy bremsstrahlung in matter

The theory of bremsstrahlung $e \to eγ$ by extremely high energy electrons passing through ordinary matter has been qualitatively incomplete. We revisit the suppression of bremsstrahlung by the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect, here accounting for quantum disruption of that effect from pair production. Our analysis covers the full range of ultra-relativistic electron and photon energies (subject to a few simplifying approximations).

hep-ph

Calculating extremely high energy bremsstrahlung in matter

Ultra-relativistic electrons initiate electromagnetic showers in ordinary matter that evolve through bremsstrahlung and pair production. At very high energy, the quantum mechanical duration of bremsstrahlung becomes longer than the mean free time to elastically scatter from the medium, leading to a significant suppression known at the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect. For some ranges of bremsstrahlung photon and initial electron energies $(k_γ,E)$, the duration becomes so long that it will also overlap with subsequent pair production by the bremsstrahlung photon, disrupting LPM suppression and drastically changing LPM predictions. We have previously calculated this change for extremely high energies ($k_γ\gg 2$ TeV or more, depending on the medium), for which the electron mass and medium-induced photon mass could be ignored. In this paper, we extend that analysis to lower (but still ultra-relativistic) energy by accounting for those masses, leading to a rich map of behavior in different regions of $(k_γ,E)$.

hep-ph

The LPM effect in sequential bremsstrahlung 2: factorization

The splitting processes of bremsstrahlung and pair production in a medium are coherent over large distances in the very high energy limit, which leads to a suppression known as the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect. In this paper, we continue analysis of the case when the coherence lengths of two consecutive splitting processes overlap (which is important for understanding corrections to standard treatments of the LPM effect in QCD), avoiding soft-gluon approximations. In particular, this paper analyzes the subtle problem of how to precisely separate overlapping double splitting (e.g.\ overlapping double bremsstrahlung) from the case of consecutive, independent bremsstrahlung (which is the case that would be implemented in a Monte Carlo simulation based solely on single splitting rates). As an example of the method, we consider the rate of real double gluon bremsstrahlung from an initial gluon with various simplifying assumptions (thick media; $\hat q$ approximation; large $N_c$; and neglect for the moment of processes involving 4-gluon vertices) and explicitly compute the correction $Δ\,dΓ/dx\,dy$ due to overlapping formation times.

hep-ph

Revisiting extremely high energy QED bremsstrahlung in matter: large modifications to the LPM effect

Very high energy electrons initiate electromagnetic showers in ordinary matter that branch and multiply through bremsstrahlung and pair production. At extremely high energies, the quantum mechanical duration of these processes becomes longer than the mean free time to elastically scatter from the medium, which leads to a very significant suppression of bremsstrahlung (and pair production) known as the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect. We revisit the LPM effect for bremsstrahlung of energy $k_γ$ from an electron of energy $E$. We find that there are very large corrections to the LPM bremsstrahlung rate for certain regions of $(k_γ,E)$ due to quantum overlap of bremsstrahlung and subsequent pair production. This possibility was first raised in the 1960s, when it was argued qualitatively that pair production would significantly decrease the bremsstrahlung rate in those regions of $(k_γ,E)$ compared to the already-suppressed LPM bremsstrahlung rate. We find the opposite -- quantum overlap of bremsstrahlung with pair production significantly *increases* the bremsstrahlung rate compared to the LPM calculation -- and we verify our qualitative arguments with an analytic calculation of the effect.

hep-ph

Are Parton Showers in a Quark-Gluon Plasma Strongly Coupled? A Theorist's Test

We study whether in-medium showers of high-energy quarks and gluons can be treated as a sequence of individual splitting processes or whether there is significant quantum overlap between where one splitting ends and the next begins. Accounting for the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect, we calculate such overlap effects to leading order in high-energy $α_s(μ)$ for the simplest theoretical situation. We investigate a measure of overlap effects that is independent of physics that can be absorbed into an effective value $\hat{q}_{eff}$ of the jet-quenching parameter $\hat{q}$.

hep-ph

Strongly vs. weakly coupled in-medium showers: energy stopping in large-$N_f$ QED

Inside a medium, showers originating from a very high-energy particle may develop via medium-induced splitting processes such as hard bremsstrahlung or pair production. During shower development, two consecutive splittings sometimes overlap quantum mechanically, so that they cannot be treated independently. Some of these effects can be absorbed into an effective value of a medium parameter known as $\hat q$. Previous calculations (with certain simplifying assumptions) have found that, after adjusting the value of $\hat q$, the leftover effect of overlapping splittings is quite small for purely gluonic large-$N_c$ showers but is very much larger for large-$N_f$ QED showers, at comparable values of $Nα$. Those works did not quite make for apples-to-apples comparisons: the gluon shower work investigated energy deposition from a gluon-initiated shower, whereas the QED work investigated charge-deposition from an electron-initiated shower. As a first step to tighten up the comparison, this paper investigates energy deposition in the QED case. Along the way, we develop a framework that should be useful in the future to explore whether the very small effect of overlapping splitting in purely gluonic showers is an artifact of having ignored quarks.

hep-ph

Are in-medium quark-gluon showers strongly coupled? Results in the large-$N_f$ limit

Inside a medium, showers originating from a very high energy particle develop via medium-induced splitting processes such as bremsstrahlung and pair production. During shower development, two consecutive splittings sometimes overlap quantum mechanically, so that they cannot be treated independently. Some of these effects can be absorbed into an effective value of a medium parameter known as $\hat q$. Previous calculations (with certain simplifying assumptions) have found that, after adjusting the value of $\hat q$, the leftover effect of overlapping splittings is quite small for purely gluonic large-$N_c$ showers but is very much larger for large-$N_f$ QED showers, at comparable values of $Nα$. Here, by investigating the same problem for QCD with *quarks* in the large-$N_f$ limit of many quark flavors, we make a first study of whether the small effect in purely gluonic showers (i) was merely an accident or (ii) is more broadly characteristic of such overlap effects in QCD. We also offer a qualitative explanation for the large size of the effect in QED vs. QCD.

hep-ph

Polarization-dependent observables in $H\to \ell^{+}\ell^{-} γ$ in the SM

The rare three body decay of a Higgs boson to a lepton-anti lepton pair and a photon has begun to attract attention, after the first evidence for the $H\to Zγ$ at CMS and ATLAS, which is a sub process of $H \to \ell^+ \ell^- γ$ . To investigate some important features of this process, we suggest that the polarized forward-backward and the photon polarization asymmetries could be useful to probe its important properties, such as the behavior of Yukawa coupling, resonance, and non-resonance contributions. Our analysis introduces a comprehensive framework to evaluate the aforementioned polarization-dependent observables. By analyzing the polarization effects of the final-state photon and lepton separately on forward-backward asymmetries, we demonstrate that loop-induced contributions play a significant role to investigate these asymmetries. Unlike the unpolarized case, where the interference effects of resonance and non-resonance effects are minimal, we show that polarization dependent observables offer a powerful tool to analyze these features of this decay mode. Furthermore, these observables can provide a handy tool for probing possible signatures of physics beyond the SM.

hep-ph

In-medium loop corrections and longitudinally polarized gauge bosons in high-energy showers

The splitting processes of bremsstrahlung and pair production in a medium are coherent over large distances in the very high energy limit, which leads to a suppression known as the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect. We continue study of the case when the coherence lengths of two consecutive splitting processes overlap (which is important for understanding corrections to standard treatments of the LPM effect in QCD), avoiding soft-emission approximations. In this particular paper, we show (i) how the "instantaneous" interactions of Light-Cone Perturbation Theory must be included in the calculation to account for effects of longitudinally-polarized gauge bosons in intermediate states, and (ii) how to compute virtual corrections to LPM emission rates, which will be necessary in order to make infrared-safe calculations of the characteristics of in-medium QCD showering of high-energy partons. In order to develop these topics in as simple a context as possible, we will focus in the current paper not on QCD but on large-$N_f$ QED, where $N_f$ is the number of electron flavors.

hep-ph

Analysis of final state lepton polarization-dependent observables in $H\to \ell^{+}\ell^{-} γ$ in the SM at loop level

Recently, the CMS and ATLAS collaborations have announced the results for $H\rightarrow Z[\rightarrow \ell^{+}\ell^{-}]γ$ with $\ell=e$ or $μ$ \cite{CMS:2022ahq,CMS:2023mku}, where $H\rightarrow Zγ$ is a sub-process of $H\rightarrow \ell^{+} \ell^{-} γ$. This semi-leptonic Higgs decay receives loop induced resonant $H\rightarrow Z[\rightarrow \ell^{+}\ell^{-}]γ$ as well as non-resonant contributions. % as discussed in \cite{Kachanovich:2021pvx}. To probe further features coming from these contributions to $H\rightarrow \ell^{+} \ell^{-} γ$, we argue that the polarization of the final state leptons is also an important parameter. We show that the contribution from the interference of resonant and non-resonant terms plays an important role when the polarization of final state lepton is taken into account, which is negligible in the case of unpolarized leptons. For this purpose, we have calculated the polarized decay rates and the longitudinal ($P_L$), normal ($P_N$) and transverse ($P_T$) polarization asymmetries. We find that these asymmetries purely come from the loop contributions and are helpful to further investigate the resonant and non-resonant nature of $H\rightarrow Z[\rightarrow \ell^{+}\ell^{-}]γ$ decay. We observe that for $\ell=e,μ$, the longitudinal decay rate is highly suppressed around $m_{\ell\ell}\approx 60$GeV when the final lepton spin is $-\frac{1}{2}$, dramatically increasing the corresponding lepton polarization asymmetries. Furthermore, we analyze another observable, the ratio of decay rates $R^{\ell\ell'}_{i\pm}$, where $\ell$ and $\ell'$ refer to different final state lepton generations. Precise measurements of these observables at the HL-LHC and the planned $e^{+}e^{-}$ can provide a fertile ground to test not only the SM but also to examine the signatures of possible NP beyond the SM.

hep-ph

Are gluon showers inside a quark-gluon plasma strongly coupled? a theorist's test

We study whether in-medium showers of high-energy gluons can be treated as a sequence of individual splitting processes $g{\to}gg$, or whether there is significant quantum overlap between where one splitting ends and the next begins. Accounting for the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect, we calculate such overlap effects to leading order in high-energy $α_{\rm s}(μ)$ for the simplest theoretical situation. We investigate a measure of overlap effects that is independent of physics that can be absorbed into an effective value $\hat q_{\rm eff}$ of the jet-quenching parameter $\hat q$.

hep-ph

The LPM effect in sequential bremsstrahlung: gluon shower development

We give details of our study of whether high-energy gluon showers inside a QCD medium can be treated as a sequence of individual splitting processes $g \to gg$, or whether there is significant quantum overlap between where one splitting ends and the next begins (neglecting effects that can be absorbed into an effective value of the jet quenching parameter $\hat q$ that characterizes the medium). The study is carried out by imagining in-medium gluon shower development in the simplest theoretical situation, which includes imagining a very large, static, homogeneous medium and taking the large $N_{\rm c}$ limit. Along the way, we also show how in-medium shower evolution can be written in terms of a "net" splitting rate $[dΓ/dx]_{\rm net}$, and we provide a moderately simple analytic fit to our numerical results for the overlap effects included in that rate, which we hope may be of use to others wishing to study possible consequences of overlapping splittings.

hep-ph

The LPM effect in sequential bremsstrahlung: incorporation of "instantaneous'' interactions for QCD

The splitting processes of bremsstrahlung and pair production in a medium are coherent over large distances in the very high energy limit, which leads to a suppression known as the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect. We continue study of the case when the coherence lengths (formation lengths) of two consecutive splitting processes overlap, avoiding soft-emission approximations. Previous work made a ``nearly-complete'' calculation of the effect of overlapping formation times on gluonic splittings such as $g \to gg \to ggg$ (with simplifying assumptions such as an infinite QCD medium and the large-$N_c$ limit). In this paper, we extend those previous rate calculations from nearly-complete to complete by including processes involving the exchange of longitudinally-polarized gluons. In the context of Lightcone Pertubation Theory, used earlier for the ``nearly-complete'' calculation, such exchanges are instantaneous in lightcone time and have their own diagrammatic representation.

hep-ph

The LPM effect in sequential bremsstrahlung: analytic results for sub-leading (single) logarithms

Consider the in-medium splitting $g \to gg$ of a very high-energy gluon traversing a QCD medium, accounting for the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect. It has been known for some time that soft radiative corrections to that splitting generate a double-log correction to the splitting rate, whose effects can be absorbed into running of the medium parameter $\hat q$ describing the rate of transverse momentum kicks to high-energy particles due to small-angle scattering from the medium. Less has been known about sub-leading, single logarithms in this context. In this paper, we find analytic formulas for those single logs (with various caveats and clarifications).

hep-ph

Thermalization of weakly coupled non-Abelian plasmas at next-to-leading order

We employ the QCD kinetic theory, including next-to-leading(NLO) order corrections in coupling constant, to study the evolution of weakly coupled non-Abelian plasmas towards thermal equilibrium. For two characteristic far-from-equilibrium systems with either under- or over-occupied initial conditions, the NLO corrections remain well under control for a wide range of couplings, and the overall effect of NLO corrections is a reduction in the time required for thermalization.

hep-ph

The LPM effect in sequential bremsstrahlung: nearly complete results for QCD

The splitting processes of bremsstrahlung and pair production in a medium are coherent over large distances in the very high energy limit, which leads to a suppression known as the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect. We continue study of the case when the coherence lengths of two consecutive splitting processes overlap (which is important for understanding corrections to standard treatments of the LPM effect in QCD), avoiding soft-emission approximations. Previous work has computed overlap effects for double splitting $g \to gg \to ggg$. To make use of those results, one also needs calculations of related virtual loop corrections to single splitting $g \to gg$ in order to cancel severe (power-law) infrared (IR) divergences. This paper provides calculations of nearly all such processes involving gluons and discusses how to organize the results to demonstrate the cancellation. In the soft emission limit, our results reproduce the known double-log behavior of earlier authors who worked in leading-log approximation. We also present a first (albeit numerical and not yet analytic) investigation of sub-leading, single IR logarithms. Ultraviolet divergences appearing in our calculations correctly renormalize the coupling $α_{\rm s}$ in the usual LPM result for leading-order $g \to gg$.

hep-ph