Jet quenching at intermediate RHIC energies

The final state energy loss of fast partons penetrating a longitudinally expanding quark-gluon plasma of effective gluon rapidity density $dN^{g}/dy=650-800$ is evaluated and incorporated together with the multiple initial state Cronin scattering in the lowest order perturbative QCD hadron production formalism. Predictions for the neutral pion attenuation in central $Au+Au$ collisions at the intermediate RHIC energy of $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=62$ GeV relative to the binary collision scaled $p+p$ result are given. The quenching is found to be a factor of 2-3 with a moderate transverse momentum dependence and the attenuation of the away-side di-hadron correlation function is estimated to be 3-5 fold.