Large Angle Hadron Correlations from Medium-Induced Gluon Radiation

Final state medium-induced gluon radiation in ultradense nuclear matter is shown to favor large angle emission when compared to vacuum bremsstrahlung due to the suppression of collinear gluons. In a simple model of momentum transfers from the medium to the jet+gluon system the phase space distribution of non-Abelian bremsstrahlung is examined to first order in opacity. Perturbative expression for the contribution of the hadronic fragments from mediuminduced gluons to the back-to-back particle correlations is derived. It is found that in the limit of large jet energy loss gluon radiation determines the yield and angular distribution of |∆φ| ≥ π 2 di-hadrons to high transverse momenta pT2 of the associated particles. Clear transition from enhancement to suppression of the away-side di-hadron correlations is established at moderate pT2 and its experimentally accessible features are predicted versus the trigger particle momentum pT1 . The measured away-side correlation function is shown to be sensitive to the broad rapidity distribution of di-jets and their vacuum and medium-induced acoplanarity.