Jet energy loss and high pTp_T photon production in hot quark-gluon plasma

Jet-quenching and photon production at high transverse momentum are studied at RHIC energies, together with the correlation between jets and photons. The energy loss of hard partons traversing the hot QGP is evaluated in the AMY formalism, consistently taking into account both induced gluon emission and elastic collisions. The production of high $p_T$ photons in Au+Au collisions is calculated, incorporating a complete set of photon-production channels. Putting all these ingredients together with a (3+1)-dimensional ideal relativistic hydrodynamical description of the thermal medium, we achieve a good description of the current experimental data. Our results illustrate that the interaction between hard jets and the soft medium is important for a complete understanding of jet quenching, photon production, and photon-hadron correlations in relativistic nuclear collisions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures - To appear in the conference proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, Tennesse

Thermally Fluctuating Second-Order Viscous Hydrodynamics and Heavy-Ion Collisions

The fluctuation-dissipation theorem requires the presence of thermal noise in viscous fluids. The time and length scales of heavy ion collisions are small enough so that the thermal noise can have a measurable effect on observables. Thermal noise is included in numerical simulations of high energy lead-lead collisions, increasing average values of the momentum eccentricity and contributing to its event by event fluctuations.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure