We perform phenomenological applications of modified gluon propagators and running coupling constants in scattering processes in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The modified forms of propagators and running coupling constant are obtained by non-perturbative methods. The processes investigated includes the diffractive ones - proton-proton elastic scattering, light vector meson photo-production and double vector meson production in gamma-gamma scattering - as well as the pion and kaon meson form factors. The results are compared with experimental data (if available), showing a good agreement with a gluon with dynamical mass but do not indicate the correct gluon propagator functional form.

The discovery of the jet quenching in central Au + Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-ion Collider (RHIC) has provided clear evidence for the formation of strongly interacting dense matter. It has been predicted to occur due to the energy loss of high energy partons that propagate through the quark gluon plasma. Since the medium is not static and it cools while expands, the strong coupling is not fixed, running with the evolution of the system. In this work, we present an investigation of the dependence on the value of the strong coupling in the parton energy loss due to elastic scatterings in a parton plasma. We analyze different prescriptions for the QCD coupling and calculate the energy and length dependence of the fractional energy loss. Moreover, the quenching factor for light and heavy quarks is estimated. We found that the predicted enhancement of heavy to light hadrons (D/pi) ratio is strongly dependent on the running of the QCD coupling constant.