Jet Quenching with Detailed Balance in a Thermal QCD Medium

The effect of detailed balance in induced gluon radiation for an energetic parton propagating inside a quark-gluon plasma is discussed. The stimulated thermal gluon emission reduces while absorption increases the parton's energy. The net contribution results in a reduction of the effective parton energy loss. The relative reduction of the parton energy loss is found to be important for intermediate parton energies and negligible for very high energies. This will increase the energy dependence of the parton energy loss and will affect the shape of suppression of moderately high p_T hadron spectra.