Quenching of polarized jets

TL;DR

This paper explores the polarization of jets associated with weak bosons in hadronic collisions, using it as a novel probe to study spin transfer and medium effects in quark-gluon plasma, with a focus on hyperon polarization.

Contribution

It introduces the study of polarized jet quenching via weak-boson-tagged processes and computes hyperon polarization to probe spin transfer and medium effects in QGP.

Findings

Hyperon polarization in $pp$ collisions computed.

Nuclear modification effects in $AA$ collisions analyzed.

Jets serve as probes for spin transfer and medium interactions.

Abstract

Jets produced in association with a $Z^{0}$ or $W^{\pm}$ boson in hadronic collisions are automatically polarized due to the parity violation of weak interaction, making these processes ideal for understanding the spin transfer from polarized partons to polarized hadrons. Furthermore, leveraging this feature, we can also employ the weak-boson-tagged process to study the quenching phenomenon of polarized jets, an aspect that has rarely been discussed in the literature. In this work, we compute the polarization of $\Lambda$ hyperons in $pp$ collisions and investigate the nuclear modification due to the jet-medium interaction in $AA$ collisions. Our results highlight this process as a valuable probe of polarized parton hadronization and of spin-dependent medium effects in the QGP.