Dynamically groomed jet radius in heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the use of Dynamical Grooming, a jet substructure technique, to probe the properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma in heavy-ion collisions, focusing on the jet splitting angle and its relation to medium characteristics.

Contribution

It provides an analytical and simulation-based study of the jet opening angle distribution using Dynamical Grooming, highlighting the role of the decoherence angle in medium interactions.

Findings

The dominant scale in the $ heta_g$ distribution is the decoherence angle $ heta_c$.

The $ heta_g$ distribution persists across weak and strong coupling models.

A proposed observable combining Dynamical Grooming and jet radius reduces medium response sensitivity.

Abstract

We explore the ability of a recently proposed jet substructure technique, Dynamical Grooming, to pin down the properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma formed in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. In particular, we compute, both analytically and via Monte-Carlo simulations, the opening angle $\theta_g$ of the hardest splitting in the jet as defined by Dynamical Grooming. Our calculation, grounded in perturbative QCD, accounts for the factorization in time between vacuum-like and medium-induced processes in the double logarithmic approximation. We observe that the dominating scale in the $\theta_g$-distribution is the decoherence angle $\theta_c$ which characterises the resolution power of the medium to propagating color probes. This feature also persists in strong coupling models for jet quenching. We further propose for potential experimental measurements a suitable combination of the Dynamical Grooming condition and the jet radius that leads to a pQCD dominated observable with a very small sensitivity ($\leq 10\%$) to medium response.