Medium dependence of hard processes at LHC

by Urs WIEDEMANN (CERN-TH)

Friday 3 Nov 2000, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Auditorium (CERN)

I discuss the nuclear medium dependence of hard processes induced by the multiple rescattering of hard partons. In this way, we can try to describe the properties of nuclear matter by perturbatively accessible probes. I start by reviewing recent theoretical progress in lepton-nucleus and hadron-nucleus collisions, where a QCD factorization theorem allows for a controlled description of a class of secondary rescattering processes, and in relativistic heavy ion collisions, where the medium dependence of jet fragmentation functions (``jet quenching'') has been studied recently in the framework of multiple soft rescattering. I then focus on jet quenching observables which will be measured by the LHC experiments ALICE and CMS. These observables are signals for differences between normal nuclear matter and the highly excited nuclear state created in heavy ion collisions.