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 ∼ (qˆ L )1/2 , where qˆ is the medium transport coefficient and L the path length, and allow to draw a distinction between the way light, with m < (qˆ L )1/2 (in contrast to massless m = 0), and genuinely heavy, with m > (qˆ L )1/2 , 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.