Bulk matter evolution and extraction of jet transport parameter in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC

Within the picture of jet quenching induced by multiple parton scattering and gluon bremsstrahlung, medium modification of parton fragmentation functions and therefore the suppression of large transverse momentum hadron spectra are controlled by both the value and the space-time profile of the jet transport parameter along the jet propagation path. Experimental data on single hadron suppression in high-energy heavy-ion collisions at the RHIC energy are analyzed within the higher-twist (HT) approach to the medium modified fragmentation functions and the next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD (pQCD) parton model. Assuming that the jet transport parameter $\hat q$ is proportional to the particle number density in both QGP and hadronic phase, experimental data on jet quenching in deeply inelastic scattering (DIS) off nuclear targets can provide guidance on $\hat q_{h}$ in the hot hadronic matter. One can then study the dependence of extracted initial value of jet quenching parameter $\hat q_{0}$ at initial time $\tau_{0}$ on the bulk medium evolution. Effects of transverse expansion, radial flow, phase transition and non-equilibrium evolution are examined. The extracted values are found to vary from $\hat q_{0}\tau_{0}= 0.54$ GeV$^{2}$ in the (1+3)d ideal hydrodynamic model to 0.96 GeV$^{2}$ in a cascade model, with the main differences coming from the initial non-equilibrium evolution and the later hadronic evolution. The overall contribution to jet quenching from the hadronic phase, about 22-44%, is found to be significant. Therefore, realistic description of the early non-equilibrium parton evolution and later hadronic interaction will be critical for accurate extraction of the jet transport parameter in the strongly interacting QGP phase in high-energy heavy-ion collisions.