Momentum broadening of an in-medium jet evolution using a light-front Hamiltonian approach

Abstract

Following the nonperturbative light-front Hamiltonian formalism developed in our preceding work [Li. et al. Phys. Rev. D 104, 056014 (2021)], we investigate the momentum broadening of a quark jet inside a SU(3) colored medium. We perform the numerical simulation of the real-time jet evolution in Fock spaces of a single quark, a quark-gluon state, and coupled quark- and quark-gluon states at various jet momenta p+ and medium densities. With the obtained jet light-front wave function, we extract the jet transverse momentum distribution, the quenching parameter, and the gluon emission rate. We analyze the dependence of momentum broadening on p+, medium density, color configuration, spatial correlation, and medium-induced gluon emission. For comparison, we also derive analytically the expectation value of the transverse momentum of a quark-gluon state in any color configuration and in an arbitrary spatial distribution in the eikonal limit. This work can help understand jet momentum broadening in the noneikonal regime.