Review of minimum-bias jet systematics at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper reviews minimum-bias jet systematics at RHIC, analyzing how jets are affected by the medium in heavy-ion collisions through two-particle correlations, revealing changes in jet properties with collision centrality.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of minimum-bias jets at RHIC using two-particle correlations, highlighting how jet characteristics evolve with collision centrality and system size.

Findings

Jet production in p-p collisions has unique properties.

Jet-associated particle yield scales with binary collisions in peripheral A-A.

Jet elongation along the beam axis increases near a critical centrality.

Abstract

Jets are studied in A-A collisions at RHIC and LHC with the goal to understand how they are affected by the medium and how they affect the medium. It is widely believed that hard-scattered partons lose energy when propagating through a medium before hadronizing. Partons losing enough energy may not even make it out of the medium as identifiable jets (although the momentum will be shared among whatever particles are emitted). "Full" jet reconstruction attempts to determine the partonic energy loss as well as possible changes in jet shape. Heavy ion collisions typically produce many unrelated particles within the jet "cone," and subtraction of this background introduces significant uncertainties. A variety of techniques using high-$p_t$ particles, assumed to be leading particles from jet fragmentation, look for disappearance of jets and attenuation of jets relative to the reaction plane, as well as medium modifications such as Mach cones. Those techniques have considerable uncertainty due to subtraction of $v_2$. In this paper we discuss minimum-bias jets observed at RHIC using two-particle correlations. We find that jets produced in p-p collisions have interesting properties. Peripheral A-A collisions look like p-p collision. As we select more central collisions the number of jets increases following binary collision scaling until at a system-dependent centrality the number of particles associated with jets increases substantially above this scaling. Near this transition centrality the jet aspect ratio---elongated transverse to the beam direction for low-energy jets produced in p-p collisions---becomes highly elongated along the beam direction in A-A collisions.