Falling Strings and Light Quark Jet Quenching at LHC

We explore phenomenological signatures of light quark jet quenching within the AdS/CFT correspondence. Numerical studies of the instantaneous energy loss of light quarks, modeled as falling strings, suggest a linear path dependence. We propose a phenomenological model for the energy loss and use it to compute the nuclear modification factor RAA for light quarks in an expanding plasma with Glauber initial conditions. The results are compared to the light hadron RAA data at the LHC and, although they show qualitative agreement, the quantitative disagreement we found motivated the exploration of effects from higher order derivative corrections to AdS5 on this observable.