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 \(b \sim R_A\)). 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.