Jet and heavy flavor production in heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent theoretical advances in modeling heavy flavor and jet production in heavy-ion collisions using Soft Collinear Effective Theory, focusing on in-medium effects and comparison with LHC data.

Contribution

It introduces a framework combining SCET with Glauber gluon interactions to describe in-medium modifications of heavy flavor and jet production in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Calculated nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ matches experimental data.

In-medium effects significantly alter jet and heavy flavor yields.

Framework provides a consistent baseline for proton-proton and heavy-ion collision comparisons.

Abstract

We review recent progress in the theoretical description of hard probes in heavy-ion collisions within the framework of Soft Collinear Effective Theory (SCET). Firstly, we consider the inclusive production of heavy flavor mesons and jets with a small radius parameter in proton-proton collisions. Secondly, we describe how in-medium effects can be incorporated consistently with the proton-proton baseline calculations. The in-medium interactions are described by Glauber gluon interactions. We present results for the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ which is most commonly used to study the quenching of hadron or jet production yields in heavy-ion collisions and we compare to recent data from the LHC.