  Particle correlation measurements associated with a hard or semi-hard trigger
in heavy-ion collisions may reflect Mach cone shockwaves excited in the bulk
medium by partonic energy loss. This is of great interest because, when
compared with theory, such measurements can provide information on the
transport properties of the medium. Specifically, the formation of Mach cone
shockwaves is sensitive to the viscosity and speed of sound, as well as the
detailed nature of the jet medium interaction. However, modeling the physics of
shockwave excitation to obtain a meaningful comparison with the measured
correlations is very challenging since the correlations arise from an interplay
of perturbative as well as non-perturbative phenomena at different momentum
scales. In this work we take a step in that direction by presenting a
systematic study of the dependence of azimuthal particle correlations on the
spatio-temporal structure of energy deposition into the medium. Our results
indicate that detailed modeling of the evolution of an initially produced hard
parton and the interaction of this evolving state with the medium is crucial,
as both magnitude and shape of the shockwave signal show a strong dependence on
the assumptions being made.
