Jet quenching parameter via soft collinear effective theory (SCET)

We analyze the transverse momentum broadening in the absence of radiation of an energetic parton propagating through quark-gluon plasma via Soft Collinear Effective Theory (SCET). We show that the probability for picking up transverse momentum k⊥ is given by the Fourier transform of the expectation value of two transversely separated light-like path-ordered Wilson lines. The subtleties about the ordering of operators do not change the q⌃ value for the strongly coupled plasma of N = 4 SYM theory. (author)