Girth and groomed radius of jets recoiling against isolated photons in lead-lead and proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV

TL;DR

This study measures the groomed jet radius and girth in photon-jet events from lead-lead and proton-proton collisions at 5.02 TeV, revealing how jet structure is modified by the quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

First measurements of groomed jet radius and girth in PbPb and pp collisions at the LHC, providing insights into jet quenching effects on jet substructure.

Findings

Jets with high momentum balance are narrower in PbPb than in pp.

Jet narrowing in PbPb is reduced when including less balanced jets.

Jet substructure modifications depend on selection criteria and energy loss effects.

Abstract

This Letter presents the first measurements of the groomed jet radius $R_\mathrm{g}$ and the jet girth $g$ in events with an isolated photon recoiling against a jet in lead-lead (PbPb) and proton-proton (pp) collisions at the LHC at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The observables $R_\mathrm{g}$ and $g$ provide a quantitative measure of how narrow or broad a jet is. The analysis uses PbPb and pp data samples with integrated luminosities of 1.7 nb$^{-1}$ and 301 pb$^{-1}$, respectively, collected with the CMS experiment in 2018 and 2017. Events are required to have a photon with transverse momentum $p_\mathrm{T}^\gamma$ $>$ 100 GeV and at least one jet back-to-back in azimuth with respect to the photon and with transverse momentum $p_\mathrm{T}^\text{jet}$ such that $p_\mathrm{T}^\text{jet} / p_\mathrm{T}^\gamma$ $>$ 0.4. The measured $R_\mathrm{g}$ and $g$ distributions are unfolded to the particle level, which facilitates the comparison between the PbPb and pp results and with theoretical predictions. It is found that jets with $p_\mathrm{T}^\text{jet} / p_\mathrm{T}^\gamma$ $>$ 0.8, i.e., those that closely balance the photon $p_\mathrm{T}^\gamma$, are narrower in PbPb than in pp collisions. Relaxing the selection to include jets with $p_\mathrm{T}^\text{jet} / p_\mathrm{T}^\gamma$ $>$ 0.4 reduces the narrowing of the angular structure of jets in PbPb relative to the pp reference. This shows that selection bias effects associated with jet energy loss play an important role in the interpretation of jet substructure measurements.