Jets and Jet-like Correlations at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent measurements of jets and jet-like correlations at RHIC, highlighting their role as probes of the quark-gluon plasma and how partons lose energy in this hot, dense medium.

Contribution

It provides an overview of experimental results on jet quenching and correlations, emphasizing the use of jets to study the properties of the quark-gluon plasma at RHIC.

Findings

Evidence of strong coupling in the sQGP from jet quenching

Partonic energy loss via gluon radiation and elastic collisions

Differences in jet behavior between pp, d-Au, and Au-Au collisions

Abstract

I present an overview of some of the recent results on jets and jet-like correlation measurements from the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Jets are produced in the initial hard scatterings of an event and can therefore be exploited as probes of the hot and dense medium produced in heavy-ion collisions. Previous RHIC results indicate that this medium, the Quark Gluon Plasma (sQGP), is strongly coupled, with partonic degrees of freedom. High pT colored partons passing through the sQGP are therefore believed to suffer energy loss via induced gluon radiation and elastic collisions, before exiting the medium and fragmenting in vacuum. Jet reconstruction and high pT correlation studies allow us to investigate how the partons interact with the medium and how the medium responds to the partons moving through it. By comparing measurements from pp and d-Au to those in Au-Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV we aim to disentangle cold nuclear matter effects from those of the hot and dense sQGP.