Heavy Quark Jet Research Articles

Holographic energy loss near critical temperature in an anisotropic background

We study the energy loss of a quark moving in a strongly coupled quark gluon plasma under the influence of anisotropy. The heavy quark drag force, diffusion coefficient, and jet quenching parameter are calculated using the Einstein–Maxwell-dilaton model, where the anisotropic background is characterized by an arbitrary dynamical parameter A. Our findings indicate that as the anisotropic factor A increases, the drag force and jet quenching parameter both increase, while the diffusion coefficient decreases. Additionally, we observe that the energy loss becomes more significant when the quark moves perpendicular to the anisotropy direction in the transverse plane. The enhancement of the rescaled jet quenching parameters near critical temperature T c , as well as drag forces for a fast-moving heavy quark is observed, which presents one of the typical features of quantum chromodynamics phase transition.

Unconventional Mechanisms of Heavy Quark Fragmentation

Heavy and light quarks produced in high-pT partonic collisions radiate differently. Heavy quarks regenerate their color field, stripped-off in the hard reaction, much faster than the light ones and radiate a significantly smaller fraction of the initial quark energy. This peculiar feature of heavy-quark jets leads to a specific shape of the fragmentation functions observed in e+e− annihilation. Differently from light flavors, the heavy quark fragmentation function strongly peaks at large fractional momentum z, i.e., the produced heavy–light mesons, B or D, carry the main fraction of the jet momentum. This is a clear evidence of the dead-cone effect, and of a short production time of a heavy–light mesons. Contrary to propagation of a small qq¯ dipole, which survives in the medium due to color transparency, a heavy–light Qq¯ dipole promptly expands to a large size. Such a big dipole has no chance to remain intact in a dense medium produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions. On the other hand, a breakup of such a dipole does not affect much the production rate of Qq¯ mesons, differently from the case of light qq¯ meson production.

Z 0 boson associated b-jet production in high-energy nuclear collisions* *Supported by the Guangdong Major Project of Basic and Applied Basic Research (2020B0301030008), the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou (2019050001), and the NSFC of China (11935007, 12035007, 12247127). S. Wang is supported by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M701279)

The production of vector boson tagged heavy quark jets potentially provides new tools to probe the jet quenching effect. In this paper, we present the first theoretical study on the angular correlations (), transverse momentum imbalance (), and nuclear modification factor () of boson tagged b-jets in heavy-ion collisions, which was performed using a Monte Carlo transport model. We find that the medium modification of the for + b-jet has a weaker dependence on than that for + jet, and the modification patterns are sensitive to the initial jet distribution. Additionally, with the high purity of the quark jet in + (b-) jet production, we calculate the momentum imbalance and the nuclear modification factor of + b-jet in Pb+Pb collisions. We observe a smaller and larger of + b-jet in Pb+Pb collisions relative to those of + jet, which may be an indication of the mass effect of jet quenching and can be tested in future measurements.

Heavy quark jet production near threshold

In this paper, we study the fragmentation of a heavy quark into a jet near threshold, meaning that final state jet carries most of the energy of the fragmenting heavy quark. Using the heavy quark fragmentation function, we simultaneously resum large logarithms of the jet radius R and 1 − z, where z is the ratio of the jet energy to the initiating heavy quark energy. There are numerically significant corrections to the leading order rate due to this resummation. We also investigate the heavy quark fragmentation to a groomed jet, using the soft drop grooming algorithm as an example. In order to do so, we introduce a collinear-ultrasoft mode sensitive to the grooming region determined by the algorithm’s zcut parameter. This allows us to resum large logarithms of zcut/(1 − z), again leading to large numerical corrections near the endpoint. A nice feature of the analysis of the heavy quark fragmenting to a groomed jet is the heavy quark mass m renders the algorithm infrared finite, allowing a perturbative calculation. We analyze this for EJR ∼ m and EJR » m, where EJ is the jet energy. To do the latter case, we introduce an ultracollinear-soft mode, allowing us to resum large logarithms of EJR/m. Finally, as an application we calculate the rate for e+e− collisions to produce a heavy quark jet in the endpoint region, where we show that grooming effects have a sizable contribution near the endpoint.

Improving heavy dijet resonance searches using jet substructure at the LHC

The search for new physics at high energy accelerators has been at the crossroads with very little hint of signals suggesting otherwise. The challenges at a hadronic machine such as the LHC is compounded by the fact that final states are swamped with jets which one needs to understand and unravel. A positive step in this direction would be to separate the jets in terms of their gluonic and quark identities, much in a similar spirit of distinguishing heavy quark jets from light quark jets that has helped in improving searches for both neutral and charged Higgs bosons at the LHC. In this work, we utilise this information using the jet substructure techniques to comment on possible improvements in sensitivity as well as discrimination of new resonances in the all hadronic mode that would be crucial in pinning down new physics signals at HL-LHC, HE-LHC and any future 100 TeV hadron collider.

TMD factorization for dijet and heavy-meson pair in DIS

We study a transverse momentum dependent (TMD) factorization framework for the processes of dijet and heavy-meson pair production in deep-inelastic-scattering in an electron-proton collider, considering the measurement of the transverse momentum imbalance of the two hard probes in the Breit frame. For the factorization theorem we employ soft-collinear and boosted-heavy-quark effective field theories. The factorized cross-section for both processes is sensitive to gluon unpolarized and linearly polarized TMD distributions and requires the introduction of a new soft function. We calculate the new soft function here at one-loop, regulating rapidity divergences with the δ-regulator. In addition, using a factorization consistency relation and a universality argument regarding the heavy-quark jet function, we obtain the anomalous dimension of the new soft function at two and three loops.

Transverse momentum broadening of a jet in quark-gluon plasma: an open quantum system EFT

We utilize the technology of open quantum systems in conjunction with the recently developed effective field theory for forward scattering to address the question of massless jet propagation through a weakly-coupled quark-gluon plasma in thermal equilibrium. We discuss various possible hierarchies of scales that may appear in this problem, by comparing thermal scales of the plasma with relevant scales in the effective field theory. Starting from the Lindblad equation, we derive and solve a master equation for the trans- verse momentum distribution of a massless quark jet, at leading orders both in the strong coupling and in the power counting of the effective field theory. Markovian approximation is justified in the weak coupling limit. Using the solution to the master equation, we study the transverse momentum broadening of a jet as a function of the plasma temperature and the time of propagation. We discuss the physical origin of infrared sensitivity that arises in the solution and a way to handle it in the effective field theory formulation. We suspect that the final measurement constraint can only cut-off leading infrared singularities and the solution to the Markovian master equation resums a logarithmic series. This work is a stepping stone towards understanding jet quenching and jet substructure observables on both light and heavy quark jets as probes of the quark-gluon plasma.

Four-jet production via double parton scattering in pA collisions at the LHC

We present predictions for the double parton scattering (DPS) four-jet production cross sections in $pA$ collisions at the LHC. Relying on the experimental capabilities to correlate centrality with impact parameter $B$ of the proton-nucleus collision, we discuss a strategy to extract the double parton scattering contributions in $pA$ collisions, which gives direct access to double parton distribution in the nucleon. We show that the production cross sections via DPS of four jets, out of which two may be light- or heavy-quark jets, are large enough to allow the method to be used already with data accumulated in 2016 $pA$ run.

Gluon emission from heavy quarks in dense nuclear matter

We study the medium-induced gluon emission process experienced by a hard jet parton propagating through the dense nuclear matter in the framework of deep inelastic scattering off a large nucleus. We work beyond the collinear rescattering expansion and the soft gluon emission limit, and derive a closed formula for the medium-induced single gluon emission spectrum from a heavy or light quark jet interacting with the dense nuclear medium via transverse and longitudinal scatterings. Without performing the collinear rescattering expansion, the medium-induced gluon emission spectrum is controlled by the full distribution of the differential elastic scattering rates between the propagating partons and the medium constituents. We further show that if one utilizes heavy static scattering centers for the traversed nuclear matter and takes the soft gluon emission limit, our result can reduce to the first order in opacity Djordjevic-Gyulassy-Levai-Vitev formula.

Predictions for energy correlators probing substructure of groomed heavy quark jets

We develop an effective field theory (EFT) framework to perform an analytic calculation for energy correlator observables computed on groomed heavy-quark jets. A soft-drop grooming algorithm is applied to a jet initiated by a massive quark to minimize soft contamination effects such as pile-up and multi-parton interactions. We specifically consider the two-particle energy correlator as an initial application of this EFT framework to compute heavy quark jet substructure. We find that there are different regimes for the event shapes, depending on the size of the measured correlator observable, that require the use of different EFT formulations, in which the quark mass and grooming parameters may be relevant or not. We use the EFT to resum large logarithms in the energy correlator observable in terms of the momentum of a reconstructed heavy hadron to NLL′ accuracy and subsequently match it to a full QCD mathcal{O} (αs) cross section, which we also compute. We compare our predictions to simulations in Pythia for e+e− collisions. We find a good agreement with partonic simulations, as well as hadronic ones with an appropriate shape function used to describe nonperturbative effects and the heavy quark hadron decay turned off. We also predict the scaling behavior for the leading nonperturbative power correction due to hadronization. Consequently, we can give a prediction for the energy correlator distribution at the level of the reconstructed heavy hadron. This work provides a general framework for the analysis of heavy quark jet substructure observables.

Higher-order corrections to heavy-quark jet quenching

We calculate higher-order corrections to the quenching factor of heavy-quark jets due to hard, in-medium splittings in the framework of the BDMPS-Z formalism. These corrections turn out to be sensitive to a single mass-scale sim ({hat{q}} L)^{{nicefrac {1}{2}}}, where {hat{q}} is the medium transport coefficient and L the path length, and allow to draw a distinction between the way light, with m < ({hat{q}} L)^{1/2} (in contrast to massless m=0), and genuinely heavy, with m > ({hat{q}} L)^{1/2}, quark jets are quenched in the medium. We show that the corrections to the quenching factor at high energies are double-logarithmic and qualitatively of the same order as for the massless quark jet.

Heavy quark jet fragmentation

In this paper we study the fragmentation of a parton into a jet containing a heavy quark. When heavy quarks are involved in a jet, the quark mass can lead to a numerically significant correction to the jet cross section and its substructure. With this motivation, we calculated the heavy quark mass effects to next-to-leading order in αs on the fragmentation functions to a jet (FFJs) and the jet fragmentation functions (JFFs), where the former describes fragmentation of parton into a jet and the latter describes fragmenting processes inside a jet. The finite size of the heavy quark mass does not change the ultraviolet behaviors, but it can give significant corrections to the finite contributions. When we take the zero mass limit, we find that the FFJs and the JFFs reproduce established results for massless partons. If we define the heavy quark jet as one that include at least one heavy (anti-)quark, the tagged heavy quark jet production is sensitive to the heavy quark mass and produces large logarithms of the mass. Taking advantage of the FFJs and JFFs, we formulate a factorization theorem for heavy quark jet production in order to resum these large logarithms systematically. As an application, we study inclusive b-jet production and show phenomenological implications due to keeping a non-zero quark mass.

Disentangling heavy flavor at colliders

We propose two new analysis strategies for studying charm and beauty quarks at colliders. The first strategy is aimed at testing the kinematics of heavy-flavor quarks within an identified jet. Here, we use the SoftDrop jet-declustering algorithm to identify two subjets within a large-radius jet, using subjet flavor tagging to test the heavy-quark splitting functions of QCD. For subjets containing a $J / \psi$ or $\Upsilon$, this declustering technique can also help probe the mechanism for quarkonium production. The second strategy is aimed at isolating heavy-flavor production from gluon splitting. Here, we introduce a new FlavorCone algorithm, which smoothly interpolates from well-separated heavy-quark jets to the gluon-splitting regime where jets overlap. Because of its excellent ability to identify charm and beauty hadrons, the LHCb detector is ideally suited to pursue these strategies, though similar measurements should also be possible at ATLAS and CMS. Together, these SoftDrop and FlavorCone studies should clarify a number of aspects of heavy-flavor physics at colliders, and provide crucial information needed to improve heavy-flavor modeling in parton-shower generators.

Energy loss, equilibration, and thermodynamics of a baryon rich strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma

Lattice data for the QCD equation of state and the baryon susceptibility near the crossover phase transition (at zero baryon density) are used to determine the input parameters of a 5-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton holographic model that provides a consistent holographic framework to study both equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium properties of a hot and {\it baryon rich} strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (QGP). We compare our holographic equation of state computed at nonzero baryon chemical potential, $\mu_B$, with recent lattice calculations and find quantitative agreement for the pressure and the speed of sound for $\mu_B \leq 400$ MeV. This holographic model is used to obtain holographic predictions for the temperature and $\mu_B$ dependence of the drag force and the Langevin diffusion coefficients associated with heavy quark jet propagation as well as the jet quenching parameter $\hat{q}$ and the shooting string energy loss of light quarks in the baryon dense plasma. We find that the energy loss of heavy and light quarks generally displays a nontrivial, fast-varying behavior as a function of the temperature near the crossover. Moreover, energy loss is also found to generally increase due to nonzero baryon density effects even though this strongly coupled liquid cannot be described in terms of well defined quasiparticle excitations. Furthermore, to get a glimpse of how thermalization occurs in a hot and baryon dense QGP, we study how the lowest quasinormal mode of an external massless scalar disturbance in the bulk is affected by a nonzero baryon charge. We find that the equilibration time associated with the lowest quasinormal mode decreases in a dense medium.

Heavy quark jets at the LHC

We summarize measurements of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] jet production at the LHC, which are an important signature and background for decays of massive particles such as [Formula: see text]. These include measurements of the inclusive and dijet production of heavy quark jets, [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] jets produced in association with vector bosons [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], and decays of boosted [Formula: see text] bosons into pairs of [Formula: see text]. The current status of [Formula: see text] tagging and [Formula: see text] jet energy scale is also reviewed. These measurements test perturbative QCD in the four and five-flavor number schemes, and provide insight into the relative importance of heavy flavor production through flavor creation, flavor excitation and gluon splitting channels. The [Formula: see text] measurement provides additionally a powerful way to probe the strange quark and antiquark sea in the proton. The recent studies looking separately at production of one and two [Formula: see text] jets find generally good agreement with theory predictions for two [Formula: see text]-jet production, while some discrepancies are observed for singly produced [Formula: see text] jets, particularly at large [Formula: see text]-jet [Formula: see text], where gluon splitting becomes dominant.

Single bottom quark production in k ⊥-factorisation

We present a study within the kT-factorisation scheme on single bottom quark production at the LHC. In particular, we calculate the rapidity and transverse momentum differential distributions for single bottom quark/anti-quark production. In our setup, the unintegrated gluon density is obtained from the NLx BFKL Green function whereas we included mass effects to the Lx heavy quark jet vertex. We compare our results to the corresponding distributions predicted by the usual collinear factorisation scheme. The latter were produced with Pythia 8.1.

Measurement of the W + b-jet and W + c-jet differential production cross sections in [formula omitted] collisions at [formula omitted

We present a measurement of the cross sections for the associated production of a W boson with at least one heavy quark jet, b or c, in proton–antiproton collisions. Data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 8.7 fb−1 recorded with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron pp¯ Collider at s=1.96 TeV are used to measure the cross sections differentially as a function of the jet transverse momenta in the range 20 to 150 GeV. These results are compared to calculations of perturbative QCD theory as well as predictions from Monte Carlo generators.

Heavy quark fragmenting jet functions

Heavy quark fragmenting jet functions describe the fragmentation of a parton into a jet containing a heavy quark, carrying a fraction of the jet momentum. They are two-scale objects, sensitive to the heavy quark mass, $m_Q$, and to a jet resolution variable, $\tau_N$. We discuss how cross sections for heavy flavor production at high transverse momentum can be expressed in terms of heavy quark fragmenting jet functions, and how the properties of these functions can be used to achieve a simultaneous resummation of logarithms of the jet resolution variable, and logarithms of the quark mass. We calculate the heavy quark fragmenting jet function $\mathcal G_Q^Q$ at $\mathcal O(\alpha_s)$, and the gluon and light quark fragmenting jet functions into a heavy quark, $\mathcal G_g^Q$ and $\mathcal G_l^Q$, at $\mathcal O(\alpha_s^2)$. We verify that, in the limit in which the jet invariant mass is much larger than $m_Q$, the logarithmic dependence of the fragmenting jet functions on the quark mass is reproduced by the heavy quark fragmentation functions. The fragmenting jet functions can thus be written as convolutions of the fragmentation functions with the matching coefficients $\mathcal J_{i j}$, which depend only on dynamics at the jet scale. We reproduce the known matching coefficients $\mathcal J_{i j}$ at $\mathcal O(\alpha_s)$, and we obtain the expressions of the coefficients $\mathcal J_{g Q}$ and $\mathcal J_{l Q}$ at $\mathcal O(\alpha_s^2)$. Our calculation provides all the perturbative ingredients for the simultaneous resummation of logarithms of $m_Q$ and $\tau_N$.

QCD jets production at proton–proton collision in peripheral kinematics

Processes in fragmentation region of proton - heavy ion (electron) collisions with creation of hadronic jets are considered in frame of QCD. Creation of one and two gluon jets as well as heavy quark jets initiated by gluons and light quarks inside the proton are considered. The differential cross section of the energy fractions and the transversal momenta of gluons and quarks from the jets are considered. The “reflection” kinematics of the light quark (gluon) jet, accompanied by heavy quark pair is discussed.

BEEC: An event generator for simulating the [formula omitted] meson production at an [formula omitted] collider

The Bc meson is a doubly heavy quark–antiquark bound state and carries flavors explicitly, which provides a fruitful laboratory for testing potential models and understanding the weak decay mechanisms for heavy flavors. In view of the prospects in Bc physics at the hadronic colliders such as Tevatron and LHC, Bc physics is attracting more and more attention. It has been shown that a high luminosity e+e− collider running around the Z0-peak is also helpful for studying the properties of Bc meson and has its own advantages. For this purpose, we write down an event generator for simulating Bc meson production through e+e− annihilation according to relevant publications. We name it BEEC, in which the color-singlet S-wave and P-wave (cb̄)-quarkonium states together with the color-octet S-wave (cb̄)-quarkonium states can be generated. BEEC can also be adopted to generate the similar charmonium and bottomonium states via the semi-exclusive channels e++e−→|(QQ̄)[n]〉+Q+Q̄ with Q=b and c respectively. To increase the simulation efficiency, we simplify the amplitude as compact as possible by using the improved trace technology. BEEC is a Fortran program written in a PYTHIA-compatible format and is written in a modular structure, one may apply it to various situations or experimental environments conveniently by using the GNU C compiler make. A method to improve the efficiency of generating unweighted events within PYTHIA environment is proposed. Moreover, BEEC will generate a standard Les Houches Event data file that contains useful information of the meson and its accompanying partons, which can be conveniently imported into PYTHIA to do further hadronization and decay simulation. Program summaryProgram title: BEECCatalogue identifier: AEQC_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEQC_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen’s University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: Standard CPC licence, http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/licence/licence.htmlNo. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 114868No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 963939Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: FORTRAN 77/90.Computer: Any computer with Fortran compiler, the program is tested with GNU Fortran compiler and Intel Fortran compiler.Operating system: UNIX, Linux and Windows.RAM: About 2.0 MB.Classification: 11.2.Nature of problem:Production of charmonium, (cb̄)-quarkonium and bottomonium via e+e− annihilation channel around the Z0 peak.Solution method:The production of heavy (QQ̄′)-quarkonium (Q,Q′=b,c) via e+e− annihilation are estimated by using the improved trace technology. The (QQ̄′)-quarkonium in color-singlet 1S-wave state, 1P-wave state, and the color-octet 1S-wave states have been studied within the framework of non-relativistic QCD. The code with option can generate weighted and unweighted events conveniently, in particular, the unweighted events are generated by using an improved hit-and-miss approach so as to improve the generating efficiency.Restrictions:The generator is aimed at the production of double heavy quarkonium through e+e− annihilation at the Z0 peak. The considered processes are those that are associated with two heavy quark jets, which could provide sizable quarkonium events around the Z0 peak.Running time:It depends on which option one chooses to match PYTHIA when generating the heavy quarkonium events. Typically, for the production of the S-wave quarkonium states, if setting IDPP=2 (unweighted events), then it takes about 2 h on a 2.9 GHz AMD Athlon (tm) II×4 635 Processor machine to generate 105 events; if setting IDPP=3 (weighted events), it takes only ∼16 min to generate 105 events. For the production of the P-wave quarkonium states, the time will be almost one hundred times longer than the case of the S-wave quarkonium.