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Jet energy loss in anisotropic plasmas meets limiting attractors

Kirill Boguslavski1,2,*, Lucas Hörl3,2,†, and Florian Lindenbauer4,2,‡

  • *Contact author: kirill.boguslavski@subatech.in2p3.fr
  • †Contact author: lhoerl@ethz.ch
  • ‡Contact author: flindenb@mit.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 054019 – Published 9 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/69px-pnlm

Abstract

We consider the energy loss of a high-energy parton in the early anisotropic plasma in heavy-ion collisions. Working in the harmonic approximation, we compute the change in the mean energy of an emitted gluon in the presence of an anisotropic background, characterized by anisotropic jet quenching parameters q^x≠q^y. Evaluating the resulting integrals numerically, we compare with isotropic media, and obtain a simple pocket formula to estimate the impact of anisotropy on the mean emitted gluon energy, which is generally small. We then combine our results with the values of the jet quenching parameter extracted from QCD kinetic theory simulations and show that the medium length dependence of this mean energy loss exhibits the characteristics of limiting attractors, which can be obtained by extrapolating to zero and infinite coupling. Our study thus relates energy loss of jet partons to universal dynamics of anisotropic plasmas.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 054019– Published 9 September, 2026
  • Received 3 April 2026
  • Accepted 23 June 2026
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