Hadronization in nuclear DIS and ultra-relativistic HIC.

We present a transport theoretical analysis of hadron attenuation in deep inelastic lepton scattering (DIS) off complex nuclei in the kinematic regime of the HERMES experiment. The HERMES data indicate the presence of strong prehadronic final state interactions shortly after the elementary lepton-nucleon interaction. The contribution of such (pre-)hadronic final state interactions to the observed jet quenching in ultra-relaticistic heavy ion collisions (HIC) at RHIC is estimated under the assumption that a similar space-time picture for hadronization also holds in a hot hadronic medium. Our results show that an additional mechanism for jet quenching must be at work for most central collisions. © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]