Q-pythia — a Monte Carlo Implementation for Jet Quenching

RHIC experiments have established jet quenching as a fundamental tool in the study of hot matter in heavy-ion collisions. The energy reached is enough for high-pT inclusive particle studies and oneor two-particle correlations up to pT ≃ 10−20 GeV. The corresponding data are successfully described by a formalism based on radiative energy losses. This formalism needs, however, to be improved for more exclusive observables, in particular for the reconstructed jet properties. Jet reconstruction is a new branch in heavy-ion collisions with very high expectations as a tool for the characterization of the medium properties. We present here an implementation of the jet quenching phenomena based on a modification at the level of the splitting functions in parton showers in standard, general purpose, Monte Carlos as PYTHIA or HERWIG.