Jet Photoproduction in Peripheral Heavy-Ion Collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates jet photoproduction in peripheral heavy-ion collisions at the LHC, comparing direct and resolved processes to understand their dependence on nuclear and photon parton distributions, and analyzes resulting jet and hadron spectra.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of direct and resolved jet photoproduction mechanisms and their sensitivity to parton distribution functions in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Resolved processes significantly contribute to jet production.

Transverse momentum distributions reveal differences between direct and resolved channels.

Results enhance understanding of photon-induced reactions in nuclear environments.

Abstract

In peripheral relativistic heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, jet+jet and photon+jet final states can be produced when a photon from the virtual photon field surrounding the nucleus interacts with a parton in the opposite nucleus (direct production). The virtual photon may also fluctuate into states with multiple gluons and q-qbar pairs (resolved production), opening more channels for jet photoproduction. We compare the rates for direct and resolved jet+jet and photon+jet production to explore the sensitivity to the nuclear and photon parton distribution functions. We calculate the transverse momentum distributions of both partonic jets and leading hadrons produced by jet fragmentation.