Studying Jet Energy Loss Mechanism with Tagged Photons (with X.-N. Wang and Z. Huang); selected publications related to this topic: X.-N. Wang, Z. Huang and I. Sarcevic, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77 (1996) 231.

We point out that events associated with large p_T direct photons in high-energy heavy-ion collisions can be used to study jet energy loss in dense matter. In such events, the p_T spectrum of charged hadrons from jet fragmentation in the opposite direction of the tagged photon is estimated to be well above the background which can be reliably subtracted at moderately large p_T . We demonstrate that comparison between the extracted fragmentation function in A-A and p-p collisions can be used to determine the jet energy loss and the interaction mean-free-path in the dense matter produced in high-energy heavy-ion collisions.