Charged Jets in Minimum Bias p-Pb Collisions at sqrt(s) = 5.02 TeV with ALICE

TL;DR

This paper presents measurements of charged jet spectra in minimum bias proton-lead collisions at 5.02 TeV, providing insights into cold nuclear matter effects and background estimation techniques relevant for understanding jet production in small systems.

Contribution

The study offers the first detailed analysis of charged jet spectra in p-Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV, including refined background estimation methods and comparison to pp data.

Findings

Charged jet spectra in p-Pb collisions are measured and compared to pp results.

Background estimation methods are tested and refined for small system collisions.

Results help constrain nuclear parton distribution functions.

Abstract

Highly energetic jets are sensitive probes for the kinematics and the topology of nuclear collisions. Jets are produced in an early stage of the collision from hard-scattered partons, which fragment into a spray of charged and neutral particles. The measurement of jet spectra in p-Pb collisions provides an important way to quantify the effects of cold nuclear matter on jet production, fragmentation and hadronization. This is possible because the hot, dense medium produced in Pb-Pb collisions is not expected to form. Proton-Lead collisions also provide an important constraint for the nuclear parton density functions. The exact evaluation of the background from the underlying event is an important ingredient to correct the measured jet spectra. The system size in p-Pb collisions is much smaller than in Pb-Pb so that the methods for background estimation need to be refined. The analysis reported here is performed on p-Pb data taken at sqrt(s_NN) = 5.02 TeV by the ALICE detector at the LHC in the beginning of 2013. The focus of our analysis lies on the minimum bias charged jet spectra and their comparison to the spectra from pp collisions. For this analysis various estimates for the background and its fluctuations have been tested in p-Pb and PYTHIA simulations.