Resolving the Scales of the Quark-Gluon Plasma with Energy Correlators

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method using energy flow correlators to analyze jet substructure in heavy-ion collisions, effectively revealing the quark-gluon plasma's characteristic scales and properties.

Contribution

It presents a new approach based on energy flow operator correlations to identify QGP scales from jet substructure in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Correlation functions identify QGP scales.

Spectra reveal onset of colour coherence.

Method robust against background noise.

Abstract

Jets provide us with ideal probes of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced in heavy-ion collisions, since its dynamics at its different scales is imprinted into the multi-scale substructure of the final state jets. We present a new approach to jet substructure in heavy-ion collisions based on the study of correlation functions of energy flow operators. By analysing the two-point correlator of an in-medium quark jet, we demonstrate that the spectra of correlation functions robustly identify the scales defined by the properties of the QGP, particularly those associated with the onset of colour coherence.