Event shapes and jets in e+e− and pp collisions

Abstract

In hadronic high energy particle collisions the shape of the event, i.e. the relative distribution of particles in momentum space, is often used to try to select events with certain topologies. It is claimed that an event shape observable like transverse sphericity is able to discriminate between jet-like events and events that are dominated by soft production from the underlying event.In this paper we investigate the relationship between the shape of the event and the number of jets found in the respective event for both e+e− and pp collisions using the PYTHIA model. In e+e− collisions, we find that the transverse sphericity of the event can be used effectively to either enhance or suppress the fraction of jets found in the selected sample, and can even discriminate between single, two, and multi-jet topologies. However, contrary to current literature, we find that in pp collisions this does not hold. It is shown that the transverse sphericity as well as the particle multiplicity is sensitive to the number of multi-parton interactions.