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In this dissertation, the phenomenology of electromagnetic radiation and high transverse momentum jets in relativistic heavy ion collisions is investigated. These are two very important probes to study the strongly interacting matter at extreme temperatures and/or densities and to investigate the possibility of a phase transition between hadronic matter and quark-gluon plasma (QGP). First, a new channel of direct photon production from a charge-asymmetric QGP is explored in the effective theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at high temperature. The photon production from this new channel is found to be suppressed compared to QCD annihilation process and Compton scattering at low baryon density, but might assume significance in baryon-rich matter. Second, the radiative jet energy loss in a three-dimensional ideal hydrodynamical medium is studied for Au+Au collisions at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). A systematic analysis of the nuclear modification factor RAA is presented for pi0 production at high pT in central and non-central collisions, at mid and forward rapidity. Third, jet energy loss by elastic collisions is consistently incorporated in the same formalism and applied to the study of jet quenching at RHIC. It is found that the nuclear modification factor RAA for pi0 in relativistic heavy ion collisions is sensitive to both collisional and radiative energy loss, while the average energy loss is less affected by the inclusion of collisional energy loss. Last, the nuclear suppression of photon-tagged jets at high pT is studied by incorporating not only direct photons, but the additional sources from fragmentation and jet-plasma interaction. We find that these additional sources are very important for a complete study of the correlations between hard photons and hadrons and even dominate in some kinetic regime.

J/psi production is considered a very important probes for studying the properties of quark-gluon plasma (QGP). At the PHENIX experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a large suppression of J/psi production in Au+Au collisions at 200 GeV center of mass energy as compared to the binary collision scaled p+p collisions was observed. The level of suppression is similar to that observed at other energies at CERN's SPS and LHC experiments. This work addresses the PHENIX J/psi measurements at sqrt{s_{NN}}= 39 and 62 GeV Au+Au collisions. These allow for the energy dependent J/psi suppression measurements in order to disentangle the important contributing factors of J/psi production. J/psi results over a wide range of center of mass energies (39-200 GeV) from PHENIX are discussed, in addition to a comprehensive comparison with other experiments.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-197). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Xiaochun He , committee chair; Nikolaus Dietz, Steven Manson, Richard Miller, A.G. Unil Perera, Murad Sarsour, committee members. Description based on contents viewed May14, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85).

Thesis--University of California. / "UCRL-9650." Includes bibliographical references.