Stimulated gluon emission and thermal absorption, in addition to induced radiation, are considered for an energetic parton propagating inside a quark-gluon plasma. In the presence of thermal gluons, stimulated emission reduces, while absorption increases, the parton's energy. The net effect is a reduction of the parton energy loss. Though decreasing asymptotically as $T/E$ with the parton energy, the relative reduction is found to be important for intermediate energies. The modified energy dependence of the energy loss will affect the shape of suppression of moderately high $p_T$ hadrons due to jet quenching in high-energy heavy-ion collisions.

• Received 28 June 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.142301