We present the first application of a recently developed effective theory of jet propagation in matter, soft-collinear effective theory with Glauber gluons (${\mathrm{SCET}}_{\mathrm{G}}$), to inclusive hadron suppression in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC and the LHC. ${\mathrm{SCET}}_{\mathrm{G}}$-based splitting kernels allow us to go beyond the traditional energy loss approximation and unify the treatment of vacuum and medium-induced parton showers. In the soft gluon emission limit, we establish a simple analytic relation between the QCD evolution and energy loss approaches to jet quenching. We quantify the uncertainties associated with the implementation of the in-medim modification of hadron production cross sections and show that the coupling between the jet and the medium can be constrained with better than 10% accuracy.

• Received 14 May 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.092002