Inclusive transverse momentum distribution of hadrons in jets produced in PbPb and pp collisions at the LHC: Data versus jet-quenching Monte Carlos

TL;DR

This study compares Monte Carlo simulations of hadron transverse momentum distributions in jets from PbPb and pp collisions with CMS experimental data to understand jet quenching effects and parton energy loss mechanisms.

Contribution

It evaluates the effectiveness of YaJEM and Pythia 6 Monte Carlo models in reproducing jet quenching phenomena observed in LHC data.

Findings

MC models show varying agreement with experimental data

Insights into parton energy loss mechanisms in quark-gluon plasma

Assessment of jet reconstruction biases in data comparison

Abstract

The inclusive transverse momentum (pt) distribution of hadrons inside jets produced in PbPb and pp collisions are simulated with the YaJEM and Pythia 6 Monte Carlo (MC) event generators. The effects of jet quenching are studied via the ratios of PbPb over pp hadron pt spectra, either by accounting for the induced virtuality Delta Q^2 transferred from the strongly-interacting medium to the parton shower or by modifying the soft sector of the parton-to-hadron fragmentation functions. The MC results are compared to experimental jet data measured by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV in four jet p_T^{jet} ranges above 100 GeV, accounting or not for the experimental jet reconstruction biases. The level of data-MC (dis)agreement provides valuable information on the mechanism of parton energy loss.