Jet fragmentation in STAR going from p+p to Au+Au

TL;DR

This paper investigates how jet fragmentation functions are modified in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC, comparing Au+Au to p+p, and assesses the impact of background fluctuations on jet measurements.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of jet fragmentation functions in p+p and Au+Au collisions, including background effects, establishing a baseline for medium modification studies.

Findings

Fragmentation functions are measured in p+p for various algorithms.

Background effects on jet reconstruction in Au+Au are quantified.

Au+Au fragmentation functions show modifications relative to p+p baseline.

Abstract

Jet fragmentation functions provide insight into jet structure and are expected to be modified by the nuclear medium in A+A collisions with respect to p+p reference measurements. If jet reconstruction is unbiased then a softening of the fragmentation functions is expected and should be observed in Au+Au collisions at RHIC. In these proceedings we present measurements of fragmentation functions in p+p for charged particles for different jet finding algorithms; these measurements are understood and therefore can be used as a reference for comparison with Au+Au results. We report the effect of background and its fluctuations on jet reconstruction in Au+Au collisions, estimated by using the jet algorithms on simulated Pythia jets embedded in real Au+Au events. Finally, measurements of fragmentation functions for jets reconstructed in Au+Au events and their comparison to the p+p baseline are presented and discussed.