Jet momentum broadening during initial stages in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We study the jet quenching parameter qˆ in the initial pre-equilibrium stages of heavy-ion collisions using the QCD kinetic theory description of the anisotropic quark-gluon plasma. This allows us to smoothly close the gap in the literature between the early glasma stage of the collision and the onset of hydrodynamics. We find that the pre-hydrodynamic evolution of qˆ during the bottom-up kinetic scenario shows little sensitivity to the initial conditions, jet energies and models of the transverse momentum cutoff. We also observe that, similarly to the glasma case, the jet quenching parameter is enhanced along the beam axis as compared to the transverse direction during most of the kinetic evolution.