Measurement of angular correlations inside jets induced by gluon polarization in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13.6 TeV

TL;DR

This paper investigates angular correlations inside jets caused by gluon polarization in proton-proton collisions at 13.6 TeV, using novel analysis methods to compare experimental data with theoretical models.

Contribution

It introduces a new analysis technique to identify gluon polarization effects within jet substructure in high-energy proton-proton collisions.

Findings

Results support models including gluon polarization effects.

Data disfavor models neglecting gluon polarization.

Measurement aligns with predictions from polarized gluon models.

Abstract

A study of angular correlations inside jets induced by gluon polarization is performed using proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 13.6 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 34.7 fb$^{-1}$, collected in 2022 with the CMS detector at the LHC. The details of the parton shower are investigated using jets reconstructed with the anti-$k_\mathrm{T}$ algorithm and subsequently declustered with the Cambridge$-$Aachen algorithm. A novel analysis technique is developed to identify characteristic features of the jet substructure and to select intermediate gluon splittings into quark-antiquark pairs. An observable sensitive to gluon polarization in the parton shower is measured and compared with PYTHIA 8 and HERWIG 7 model predictions, with and without angular correlations induced by the gluon spin. The results are consistent with models that incorporate gluon polarization and strongly disfavor those that neglect them.