Nuclear geometry of jet quenching

The most suitable way to study jet quenching as a function of the distance traversed is varying the impact parameter b of the ultrarelativistic nucleus–nucleus collision (the initial energy density in the nuclear overlapping zone is almost independent of b up to ). It is shown that the b-dependences of the medium-induced radiative and collisional energy losses of a hard parton jet propagating through dense QCD matter are very different. The experimental verification of this phenomenon could be performed for a jet with non-zero cone size based on the essential difference between the angular distributions of the collisional and radiative energy losses. Received: 10 February 2000 / Revised version: 18 April 2000 / Published online: 6 July 2000