Jets In Heavy-ion Collisions Research Articles

Soft drop groomed jet angularities at the LHC

Jet angularities are a class of jet substructure observables where a continuous parameter is introduced in order to interpolate between different classic observables such as the jet mass and jet broadening. We consider jet angularities measured on an inclusive jet sample at the LHC where the soft drop grooming procedure is applied in order to remove soft contaminations from the jets. The soft drop algorithm allows for a precise comparison between theory and data and could be used to extract the QCD strong coupling constant αs from jet substructure data in the future. We develop a framework to realize the resummation of all relevant large logarithms at the next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) accuracy. To demonstrate that the developed formalism is suitable for the extraction of αs, we extend our calculations to next-to-next-to-leading logarithm (NNLL) for the jet mass case. Overall, we find good agreement between our NLL numerical results and Pythia simulations for LHC kinematics and we observe an improved agreement when the NNLL components are included. In addition, we expect that groomed jet angularities will be a useful handle for studying the modification of jets in heavy-ion collisions.

Medium response to jets in heavy ion collisions

A short overview on recent progress in studies of medium response to jet quenching in heavy ion collisions is presented. We show the typical features of medium response and give comment on their connection to jet observables by introducing the work done by the author and collaborators as an example.

Vector boson tagged jets and jet substructure

In these proceedings, we report on recent results related to vector boson-tagged jet production in heavy ion collisions and the related modification of jet substructure, such as jet shapes and jet momentum sharing distributions. Z0-tagging and γ-tagging of jets provides new opportunities to study parton shower formation and propagation in the quark-gluon plasma and has been argued to provide tight constrains on the energy loss of reconstructed jets. We present theoretical predictions for isolated photon-tagged and electroweak boson-tagged jet production in Pb+Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV at the LHC, addressing the modification of their transverse momentum and transverse momentum imbalance distributions. Comparison to recent ATLAS and CMS experimental measurements is performed that can shed light on the medium-induced radiative corrections and energy dissipation due to collisional processes of predominantly quark-initiated jets. The modification of parton splitting functions in the QGP further implies that the substructure of jets in heavy ion collisions may differ significantly from the corresponding substructure in proton-proton collisions. Two such observables and the implication of tagging on their evaluation is also discussed.

Measurements of jets in heavy ion collisions

The Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) is created in high energy heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This medium is transparent to electromagnetic probes but nearly opaque to colored probes. Hard partons produced early in the collision fragment and hadronize into a collimated spray of particles called a jet. The partons lose energy as they traverse the medium, a process called jet quenching. Most of the lost energy is still correlated with the parent parton, contributing to particle production at larger angles and lower momenta relative to the parent parton than in proton-proton collisions. This partonic energy loss can be measured through several observables, each of which give different insights into the degree and mechanism of energy loss. The measurements to date are summarized and the path forward is discussed.

Jets in Heavy Ion Collisions with the ATLAS Detector

Jets constitute a golden probe to study the quark gluon plasma produced in heavy ion collisions at the LHC. Being produced at the early stages of the collisions, they are expected to be modified as propagating through the hot and dense medium. A signature of the modification is the energy loss lowering the jet yields at a given transverse momentum. A factor of two suppression is observed in central Pb+Pb collisions with respect to [Formula: see text] collisions. Other signatures are the modification of the dijet momentum balance and the modification of fragmentation functions. These proceedings describe results on these observables from ATLAS in Runs 1 and 2. The high statistical significance of these data samples collected by ATLAS allows precision measurements of these observables in a wide range of transverse momentum and centrality.

Heavy Flavored Jets with CMS

The energy loss of jets in heavy-ion collisions is expected to depend on the mass and flavor of the initiating parton. Thus, measurements of jet quenching with tagged partons place powerful constraints on the thermodynamic and transport properties of the hot and dense medium. Furthermore, recent results that constrain the jet production mechanism will shed additional light on the contributions of leading and next-to-leading order heavy flavor jet production with regard to the global energy loss picture. To this end, we present recent results measuring spectra and nuclear modification factors of jets associated to charm and bottom quarks in both pPb and PbPb collisions, as well as measurements of dijet asymmetry of pairs of b-jets in PbPb collisions.

Studies of Heavy Flavored Jets with CMS

The energy loss of jets in heavy-ion collisions is expected to depend on the mass and flavor of the initiating parton. Thus, measurements of jet quenching with identified partons place powerful constraints on the thermodynamic and transport properties of the hot and dense medium. We present recent results of heavy flavor jet spectra and nuclear modification factors of jets associated to charm and bottom quarks in both pPb and PbPb collisions. New measurements to be presented include the dijet asymmetry of pairs of b-jets in PbPb collisions and a finalized c-jet measurement in pPb collisions based on new data collected during the 2015 heavy-ion run period at the LHC.

Probing the Hardest Branching within Jets in Heavy-Ion Collisions.

Heavy ion collisions present exciting opportunities to study the effects of quantum coherence in the formation of subatomic particle showers. We report on the first calculation of the momentum sharing and angular separation distributions between the leading subjets inside a reconstructed jet in such collisions. These observables are directly sensitive to the hardest branching within jets and can probe the early stage of the jet formation. We find that the leading-order medium-induced splitting functions, here obtained in the framework of soft-collinear effective theory with Glauber gluon interactions, capture the essential many-body physics, which is different from proton-proton reactions. Qualitative and in most cases quantitative agreement between theory and preliminary CMS measurements suggests that hard parton branching in strongly interacting matter can be dramatically modified. We also propose a new measurement that will illuminate its angular structure.

Groomed jets in heavy-ion collisions: sensitivity to medium-induced bremsstrahlung

We argue that contemporary jet substructure techniques might facilitate a more direct measurement of hard medium-induced gluon bremsstrahlung in heavy-ion collisions, and focus specifically on the “soft drop declustering” procedure that singles out the two leading jet substructures. Assuming coherent jet energy loss, we find an enhancement of the distribution of the energy fractions shared by the two substructures at small subjet energy caused by hard medium-induced gluon radiation. Departures from this approximation are discussed, in particular, the effects of colour decoherence and the contamination of the grooming procedure by soft background. Finally, we propose a complementary observable, that is the ratio of the two-pronged probability in Pb-Pb to proton-proton collisions and discuss its sensitivity to various energy loss mechanisms.

Inclusive production of small radius jets in heavy-ion collisions

We develop a new formalism to describe the inclusive production of small radius jets in heavy-ion collisions, which is consistent with jet calculations in the simpler proton–proton system. Only at next-to-leading order (NLO) and beyond, the jet radius parameter R and the jet algorithm dependence of the jet cross section can be studied and a meaningful comparison to experimental measurements is possible. We are able to consistently achieve NLO accuracy by making use of the recently developed semi-inclusive jet functions within Soft Collinear Effective Theory (SCET). In addition, single logarithms of the jet size parameter αsnlnn⁡R are resummed to next-to-leading logarithmic (NLLR) accuracy in proton–proton collisions. The medium modified semi-inclusive jet functions are obtained within the framework of SCET with Glauber gluons that describe the interaction of jets with the medium. We present numerical results for the suppression of inclusive jet cross sections in heavy ion collisions at the LHC and the formalism developed here can be extended directly to corresponding jet substructure observables.

Jets in heavy ion collisions

High energy collisions of heavy nuclei permit the study of nuclear matter at temperatures and energy densities so high that the fundamental theory for strong interactions, QCD, predicts a phase transition to a plasma of quarks and gluons. This matter, called a Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), has been studied experimentally for the last decade and has been observed to be a strongly interacting liquid with a low viscosity. High energy partons created early in the collision interact with the QGP and provide unique probes of its properties. Hard partons fragment into collimated sprays of particles called jets and have been studied through measurements of single particles, correlations between particles, and measurements of fully reconstructed jets. These measurements demonstrate partonic energy loss in the QGP and constrain the QGP’s properties. Measurements of the jet structure give insight into the mechanism of this energy loss. The information we have learned from studies of jets and challenges for the field will be reviewed.

Angular structure of jet quenching within a hybrid strong/weak coupling model

Within the context of a hybrid strong/weak coupling model of jet quenching, we study the modification of the angular distribution of the energy within jets in heavy ion collisions, as partons within jet showers lose energy and get kicked as they traverse the strongly coupled plasma produced in the collision. To describe the dynamics transverse to the jet axis, we add the effects of transverse momentum broadening into our hybrid construction, introducing a parameter Kequiv widehat{q}/{T}^3 that governs its magnitude. We show that, because of the quenching of the energy of partons within a jet, even when K ≠ 0 the jets that survive with some specified energy in the final state are narrower than jets with that energy in proton-proton collisions. For this reason, many standard observables are rather insensitive to K. We propose a new differential jet shape ratio observable in which the effects of transverse momentum broadening are apparent. We also analyze the response of the medium to the passage of the jet through it, noting that the momentum lost by the jet appears as the momentum of a wake in the medium. After freezeout this wake becomes soft particles with a broad angular distribution but with net momentum in the jet direction, meaning that the wake contributes to what is reconstructed as a jet. This effect must therefore be included in any description of the angular structure of the soft component of a jet. We show that the particles coming from the response of the medium to the momentum and energy deposited in it leads to a correlation between the momentum of soft particles well separated from the jet in angle with the direction of the jet momentum, and find qualitative but not quantitative agreement with experimental data on observables designed to extract such a correlation. More generally, by confronting the results that we obtain upon introducing transverse momentum broadening and the response of the medium to the jet with available jet data, we highlight the importance of these processes for understanding the internal, soft, angular structure of high energy jets.

Heavy Flavored Jet Modification at CMS

The energy loss of jets in heavy-ion collisions is expected to depend on the flavor of the fragmenting parton. Thus, measurements of jet quenching as a function of flavor place powerful constraints on the thermodynamical and transport properties of the hot and dense medium. Specifically, pPb measurements provide crucial insights into the behavior of the cold nuclear matter effect, which is required to fully understand the hot and dense medium effects on jets in PbPb collisions. In these proceedings, we present the heavy flavor jet spectra and measurements of the nuclear modification factors of b jets in both PbPb and pPb as a function of transverse momentum and pseudorapidity, at sNN=2.76 and 5.02 TeV, respectively. In addition, we present the first ever measurement of charm-tagged jets in a heavy-ion environment, including cross-sections and comparisons to PYTHIA in both pPb and pp.

Jets In Heavy Ion Collisions with CMS

Jet physics in heavy ion collisions is a rich field which has been rapidly evolving since the first observations of medium interactions at RHIC through back-to-back hadron correlations and at LHC via reconstructed jets. In order to completely characterize the final state via jet-medium interactions and distinguish between competing energy loss mechanisms, complementary and robust jet observables are investigated. Latest developments of jet finding techniques and their applications to heavy ion environments are discussed with an emphasis given on experimental results from CMS experiment.

Fulfilling the RHIC mission with sPHENIX

RHIC has made groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of QCD under extreme conditions with the discovery of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) as a perfect fluid and first observations of energy loss. It continues to play a crucial role in understanding and quantifying the properties of the QGP as well as mapping out the QCD phase diagram. However, detailed questions concerning partonic energy loss in the QGP remain. There is a need to build a new detector at RHIC to measure important rare probes of the QGP. A new detector will benefit from advances in reconstructing jets in heavy ion collisions and the increased luminosity achievable with RHIC. Constraining models at RHIC and LHC energies are crucial for extracting the temperature dependence of transport properties of the QGP. To measure newly developed observables made at the LHC with high precision at RHIC, a detector with full azimuthal coverage and spanning a pseudorapidity range between -1.1 and 1.1, known as sPHENIX, has been proposed. The capabilities of the new detector will allow for a full understanding of jet energy loss and upsilon suppression. The goals for sPHENIX and route to achieving these goals along with the current status of the detector will be presented on behalf of the new collaboration.

Jet fragmentation in p + Pb and Pb + Pb with ATLAS

The modification of jets in heavy ion collisions is a central tool to study the properties of QCD matter at high temperature and its interaction with hard probes. Jet production in heavy ion collisions is observed to be suppressed relative to expectations from pp collisions and the measurement of the longitudinal fragmentation functions in Pb+Pb can provide insight into mechanism of the modification of the parton showering by the QCD medium. In proton-nucleus collisions, a large amount of hot QCD matter is not expected to be made and no evidence of jet suppression is observed. However, an excess is observed in the production of high momentum charged particles in p+Pb collisions relative to pp collisions. The p+Pb fragmentation functions can provide insight into the high momentum charged particle excess and into a possible influence of Pb+Pb jet fragmentation by effects due to the nuclear initial state. The ATLAS measurements of charged particle fragmentation functions in pp, p+Pb, and Pb+Pb collisions are presented.

Jets in heavy ion collisions at the LHC

In this document I present a brief review of the concepts of jet physics employed in heavy ion physics. Fast partons originating from scatterings with large momentum transfer are produced at very short time-scales and subsequently propagate through the strongly interacting medium produced in the collisions of heavy nuclei. They feature the only experimental handle available to directly study the interaction of a well defined probe and the medium. Consequently they are ideally suited to investigate the nature of the medium produced in these collisions and the mechanism of interaction between the medium and the partons. The experimental methods necessary to reconstruct jets originating from fragmenting partons in the environment of high particle multiplicity heavy ion collisions will be discussed. Physics observables suited to investigate the parton medium interaction will be introduced and a summary of recent results on jet physics in heavy ion collisions is presented.

Production of strange particles in charged jets in Pb–Pb and p–Pb collisions measured with ALICE

Measurements of spectra of identified particles produced in jets in heavy-ion collisions can provide further important insights into the interplay of various hadronisation processes which participate in the particle production in the hot and dense medium. In this contribution, we present the measurements of the pT spectra of Λ baryons and K0S mesons produced in association with charged jets in Pb-Pbcollisions at = 2.76 TeV and in p-Pb collisions at = 5.02 TeV. The results are obtained with the ALICE detector at the LHC, exploiting the excellent particle identification capabilities of this experiment. Baryon-to-meson ratios of the spectra of strange particles associated with jets are studied in central collisions and are compared to the ratios obtained for inclusive particles and for particles coming from the underlying event.

Hydrodynamics and jets in dialogue

Energy and momentum loss of jets in heavy ion collisions can affect the fluid dynamic evolution of the medium. We determine realistic event-by-event averages and correlation functions of the local energy-momentum transfer from hard particles to the soft sector using the jet-quenching Monte-Carlo code Jewel combined with a hydrodynamic model for the background. The expectation values for source terms due to jets in a typical (minimum-bias) event affect the fluid dynamic evolution mainly by their momentum transfer. This leads to a small increase in flow. The presence of hard jets in the event constitutes only a minor correction.

Data-driven analysis methods for the measurement of reconstructed jets in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC

Abstract We present data-driven methods for the full reconstruction of jets in heavy ion collisions, for inclusive and coincidence jet measurements at both RHIC and LHC. The complex structure of heavy ion events generates a large background of combinatorial jets, and smears the measured energy of the true hard jet signal. Techniques to correct for these background effects can induce biases in the reported jet distributions, which must be well controlled for accurate measurement of jet quenching. Using model studies, we evaluate the proposed methods for measuring jet distributions accurately while minimizing the fragmentation bias of the measured population.