Probing the mass effect of heavy quark jets in high-energy nuclear collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how heavy quark jets lose energy in high-energy nuclear collisions, revealing the mass-dependent suppression patterns and proposing experimental strategies to distinguish different jet origins.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of heavy quark jet suppression, highlighting the mass effect and dispersive substructure, with predictions for experimental differentiation of jet types.

Findings

Gluon splitting dominates high pT HQ jets in p+p collisions.

HQ jets from gluon splitting lose more energy than those from heavy quarks.

Predicted R_AA hierarchy aligns with heavy quark mass effects.

Abstract

The production of heavy quark (HQ) jets provides a new arena to address the mass effect of jet quenching in heavy-ion physics. This paper presents a theoretical study of HQ jet yield suppression in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC and focuses on the energy loss of HQ jets produced by different mechanisms. The p+p baseline is carried out by the SHERPA generator, and the jet-medium interactions are described by the SHELL transport model, which considers the elastic and inelastic partonic energy loss in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). In p+p collisions, our numerical results indicate that the HQ jets from gluon splitting ($g \rightarrow Q$-jet) give the dominant contribution at high $p_T$, and it shows more dispersive structures than the HQ-initiated one ($Q \rightarrow Q$-jet). In nucleus-nucleus collisions, our calculations are consistent with the inclusive and b-jet $R_{AA}$ recently measured by the ATLAS collaboration, which suggests a remarkable manifestation of the mass effect of jet energy loss. As a result of the dispersive substructure, the $g \rightarrow Q$-jet will lose more energy than the $Q \rightarrow Q$-jet in the QGP. Due to the significant contribution of $g \rightarrow c$-jet, the $R_{AA}$ of c-jet will be comparable or even smaller than that of inclusive jet. To experimentally distinguish the $g \rightarrow Q$-jet and $Q \rightarrow Q$-jet, we propose the event selection strategies based on their topological features and test the performances. By isolating the $c \rightarrow c$-jet and $b \rightarrow b$-jet, the jets initiated by heavy quarks, we predict that the order of their $R_{AA}$ are in line with the mass hierarchy of energy loss. Future measurements on the $R_{AA}$ of $Q \rightarrow Q$-jet and $g \rightarrow Q$-jet will provide a unique chance to test the flavor/mass dependence of energy loss at the jet level.