  We investigate the medium induced fragmentation of jets in a high-temperature
QCD plasma. Based on an effective kinetic theory of QCD, we study the
non-equilibrium evolution of the jet shower and the chemical equilibration of
jet fragments in the medium. By including radiative emissions as well as
elastic interactions, our approach extends all the way from the jet energy
scale to the temperature of the medium and includes important effects such as
the recoil of the medium. We present results for the in-medium fragmentation,
including chemical and kinetic equilibration of the soft fragments and discuss
implications of our result to jet quenching physics and the problem of
thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma in heavy ion collisions.
