arXiv subjects

Alba Soto-Ontoso

Publications and source records attributed to Alba Soto-Ontoso.

34 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

PanScales showers for hadron collisions: all-order validation

We carry out extensive tests of the next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) accuracy of the PanScales parton showers, as introduced recently for colour-singlet production in hadron collisions. The tests include comparisons to (semi-)analytic NLL calculations of a wide range of hadron-collider observables: the colour-singlet boson transverse momentum distribution; global and non-global hadronic energy flow variables related to jet vetoes and analogues of jettiness distributions; (sub)jet multiplicities; and observables sensitive to the DGLAP evolution of the incoming momentum fractions. In the tests, we also include an implementation of a standard transverse-momentum ordered dipole shower, to establish the size of missing NLL effects in such showers, which, depending on the observable, can reach $100\%$. This paper, together with arXiv:2205.02237, constitutes the first step towards process-independent NLL-accurate parton showers for hadronic collisions.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Medium-induced radiative kernel with the Improved Opacity Expansion

We calculate the fully differential medium-induced radiative spectrum at next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy within the Improved Opacity Expansion (IOE) framework. This scheme allows us to gain analytical control of the radiative spectrum at low and high gluon frequencies simultaneously. The high frequency regime can be obtained in the standard opacity expansion framework in which the resulting power series diverges at the characteristic frequency $ω_c\sim \hat q L^2$. In the IOE, all orders in opacity are resumed systematically below $ω_c$ yielding an asymptotic series controlled by logarithmically suppressed remainders down to the thermal scale $T \ll ω_c$, while matching the opacity expansion at high frequency. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the IOE at NLO accuracy reproduces the characteristic Coulomb tail of the single hard scattering contribution as well as the Gaussian distribution resulting from multiple soft momentum exchanges. Finally, we compare our analytic scheme with a recent numerical solution, that includes a full resummation of multiple scatterings, for LHC-inspired medium parameters. We find a very good agreement both at low and high frequencies showcasing the performance of the IOE which provides for the first time accurate analytic formulas for radiative energy loss in the relevant perturbative kinematic regimes for dense media.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Accessing subnuclear fluctuations and saturation with multiplicity dependent $J/ψ$ production in p+p and p+Pb collisions

We study the production of $J/ψ$ vector mesons as a function of charged hadron multiplicity in p+p and p+Pb collisions at LHC energies. We employ the color glass condensate framework, using running coupling Balitsky-Kovchegov evolved dipole amplitudes, to compute gluon and $c\bar{c}$-pair production. We use fragmentation functions to obtain charged hadrons, and explore two different hadronization schemes for the $J/ψ$: non-relativistic quantum chromodynamics and the improved color evaporation model. In our framework, event-by-event multiplicity fluctuations of both hadrons and $J/ψ$ are driven by geometric and saturation scale normalization fluctuations. Studying the correlation between $J/ψ$ and hadron multiplicity, we show that the characteristic difference between forward and backward rapidity in p+Pb collisions is a result of different degrees of saturation probed at different rapidities. We demonstrate that experimental data on heavy-flavor production as a function of event activity provide stringent constraints on the fluctuating proton structure.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Dynamically groomed jet radius in heavy-ion collisions

We explore the ability of a recently proposed jet substructure technique, Dynamical Grooming, to pin down the properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma formed in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. In particular, we compute, both analytically and via Monte-Carlo simulations, the opening angle $θ_g$ of the hardest splitting in the jet as defined by Dynamical Grooming. Our calculation, grounded in perturbative QCD, accounts for the factorization in time between vacuum-like and medium-induced processes in the double logarithmic approximation. We observe that the dominating scale in the $θ_g$-distribution is the decoherence angle $θ_c$ which characterises the resolution power of the medium to propagating color probes. This feature also persists in strong coupling models for jet quenching. We further propose for potential experimental measurements a suitable combination of the Dynamical Grooming condition and the jet radius that leads to a pQCD dominated observable with a very small sensitivity ($\leq 10\%$) to medium response.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Revisiting transverse momentum broadening in dense QCD media

We reconsider the problem of transverse momentum broadening of a highly-energetic parton suffering multiple scatterings in dense colored media, such as the thermal Quark-Gluon plasma or large nuclei. In the framework of Molière's theory of multiple scattering we re-derive a simple analytic formula, to be used in jet quenching phenomenology, that accounts for both the multiple soft and hard Rutherford scattering regimes. Further, we discuss the sensitivity of momentum broadening to modeling of the non-perturbative infrared sector by presenting a detailed analytic and numerical comparison between the two widely used models in phenomenology: the Hard Thermal Loop and the Gyulassy-Wang potentials. We show that for the relevant values of the parameters the non-universal, model dependent contributions are negligible, at LHC, RHIC and EIC energies thus consolidating the predictive power of jet quenching theory.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Dynamical grooming meets LHC data

In this work, we analyse the all-orders resummation structure of the momentum sharing fraction, $z_g$, opening angle, $θ_g$, and relative transverse momentum, $k_{t,g}$, of the splitting tagged by the dynamical grooming procedure in hadronic collisions. We demonstrate that their resummation does non-exponentiate and it is free of clustering logarithms. Then, we analytically compute the probability distributions of ($z_g$, $θ_g$, $k_{t,g}$) up to next-to next-to-double logarithm accuracy (N2DL) in the narrow jet limit, including a matching to leading order in $α_s$. On the phenomenological side, we perform an analytic-to-parton level comparison with Pythia and Herwig. We find that differences between the analytic and the Monte-Carlo results are dominated by the infra-red regulator of the parton shower. Further, we present the first analytic comparison to preliminary ALICE data and highlight the role of non-perturbative corrections in such low-$p_t$ regime. Once the analytic result is corrected by a phenomenologically determined non-perturbative factor, we find very good agreement with the data.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Dynamical grooming at work: from p+p to Pb+Pb

We present a quantitative comparison between two grooming techniques: SoftDrop (SD) and Dynamical Grooming (DyG), in terms of the resilience of their associated observables to the underlying event, hadronization and pileup in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt s\!=\! 13$ TeV. For that purpose, we study the groomed momentum fraction, $z_g$, in QCD jets along with boosted W tagging. In addition, we obtain the groomed momentum angle, $R_g$, within several jet quenching Monte-Carlo models in order to asses the sensitivity of SD and DyG observables to quark-gluon plasma (QGP) effects in heavy-ion collisions.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Tagging boosted hadronic objects with dynamical grooming

We evaluate the phenomenological applicability of the dynamical grooming technique, introduced in [1], to boosted W and top tagging at LHC conditions. An extension of our method intended for multi-prong decays with an internal mass scale, such as the top quark decay, is presented. First, we tackle the reconstruction of the mass distribution of W and top jets quantifying the smearing due to pileup. When compared to state-of-the-art grooming algorithms like SoftDrop and its recursive version, dynamical grooming shows an enhanced resilience to background fluctuations. In addition, we asses the discriminating power of dynamical grooming to distinguish W (top) jets from QCD ones by performing a two-step analysis: introduce a cut on the groomed mass around the W (top) mass peak followed by a restriction on the N-subjettinnes ratio $τ_{21}$ ($τ_{32}$). For W jets, the out-of-the-box version of dynamical grooming, free of ad-hoc parameters, results into a comparable performance to SoftDrop. Regarding the top tagger efficiency, 3-prong dynamical grooming, in spite of its simplicity, presents better performance than SoftDrop and similar results to Recursive SoftDrop.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Dynamical grooming of QCD jets

We propose a new class of infrared-collinear (IRC) and Sudakov safe observables with an associated jet grooming technique that removes dynamically soft and large angle branches. It is based on identifying the hardest branch in the Cambridge/Aachen re-clustering sequence and discarding prior splittings that occur at larger angles. This leads to a dynamically generated cut-off on the phase space of the tagged splitting that is encoded in a Sudakov form factor. In this exploratory study we focus on the mass and momentum sharing distributions of the tagged splitting which we analyze analytically to modified leading logarithmic accuracy and compare to Monte-Carlo simulations.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

A background estimator for jet studies in p+p and A+A collisions

Experimentally, jet physics studies face an unavoidable task: distinguishing, at the detector level, the particles produced in the hard partonic scattering from the ones created in unrelated soft processes such as pileup interactions in high-luminosity proton-proton scattering or the underlying event in heavy-ion collisions. The fluctuating nature of the background constitutes the main source of uncertainty for any subtraction algorithm. Aiming at mitigating the effect of such fluctuations, we present a new method to estimate the background contribution to the transverse momentum on a jet-by-jet basis. Our approach is based on estimating the median background momentum density stored above a $p_{\rm T}$-cut applied at the constituent level and an experimentally accessible correction term related to the signal contribution below the cut. This allows to trade part of the uncertainty due to background contamination for that of the signal below the cut, similarly to SoftKiller method. We propose to reduce the fluctuations of the latter by exploiting intrinsic correlations among the soft and hard sectors of QCD jets. Our data-driven approach is tested against PYTHIA8 and JEWEL di-jet events embedded in a thermal background and compared to the area-median and SoftKiller methods. The main result of this study is a $\sim 5\!-\!40\%$ improvement on the resolution of the reconstructed jet $p_T$ compared to previous methods in a high-luminosity proton-proton scenario. Its applicability in a heavy-ion context is also discussed.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Influence of the neutron-skin effect on nuclear isobar collisions at RHIC

The unambiguous observation of a Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME)-driven charge separation is the core aim of the isobar program at RHIC consisting of ${^{96}_{40}}$Zr+${^{96}_{40}}$Zr and ${^{96}_{44}}$Ru+${^{96}_{44}}$Ru collisions at $\sqrt {s_{\rm NN}}\!=\!200$ GeV. We quantify the role of the spatial distributions of the nucleons in the isobars on both eccentricity and magnetic field strength within a relativistic hadronic transport approach (SMASH, Simulating Many Accelerated Strongly-interacting Hadrons). In particular, we introduce isospin-dependent nucleon-nucleon spatial correlations in the geometric description of both nuclei, deformation for ${^{96}_{44}}$Ru and the so-called neutron skin effect for the neutron-rich isobar i.e. ${^{96}_{40}}$Zr. The main result of this study is a reduction of the magnetic field strength difference between ${^{96}_{44}}$Ru+${^{96}_{44}}$Ru and ${^{96}_{40}}$Zr+${^{96}_{40}}$Zr by a factor of 2, from $10\%$ to $5\%$ in peripheral collisions when the neutron-skin effect is included. Further, we find an increase of eccentricity by up to 10$\%$ when deformation is taken into account while neither the neutron skin effect nor the nucleon-nucleon correlations result into a significant modification of this observable with respect to the traditional Woods-Saxon modeling. Our results suggest a significantly smaller CME signal to background ratio for the experimental charge separation measurement in peripheral collisions with the isobar systems than previously expected.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2018

Correlated gluonic hot spots meet symmetric cumulants data at LHC energies

We present a systematic study on the influence of spatial correlations between the proton constituents, in our case gluonic hot spots, their size and their number on the symmetric cumulant SC(2,3), at the eccentricity level, within a Monte Carlo Glauber framework [1]. When modeling the proton as composed by 3 gluonic hot spots, the most common assumption in the literature, we find that the inclusion of spatial correlations is indispensable to reproduce the negative sign of SC(2,3) in the highest centrality bins as dictated by data. Further, the subtle interplay between the different scales of the problem is discussed. To conclude, the possibility of feeding a 2+1D viscous hydrodynamic simulation with our entropy profiles is exposed.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Symmetric cumulants as a probe of the proton substructure at LHC energies

We present a systematic study of the normalized symmetric cumulants, NSC(n,m), at the eccentricity level in proton-proton interactions at $\sqrt s\!=\! 13$ TeV within a wounded hot spot approach. We focus our attention on the influence of spatial correlations between the proton constituents, in our case gluonic hot spots, on this observable. We notice that the presence of short-range repulsive correlations between the hot spots systematically decreases the values of NSC(2,3) and NSC(2,4) in mid-to-ultra central collisions while increases them in peripheral interactions. In the case of NSC(2,3) we find that, as suggested by data, an anti-correlation of $\varepsilon_2$ and $\varepsilon_3$ in ultra-central collisions, i.e. NSC(2,3)$<0$, is possible within the correlated scenario while it never occurs without correlations. We attribute this fact to the decisive role of correlations on enlarging the probability of interaction topologies that reduce the value of NSC(2,3) and, eventually, make it negative. Further, we explore the dependence of our conclusions on the values of the hot spot radius and the repulsive core distance. Our results add evidence to the idea that considering spatial correlations between the subnucleonic degrees of freedom of the proton may have a strong impact on the initial state properties of proton-proton interactions [1].

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Correlated wounded hot spots in proton-proton interactions

We investigate the effect of non-trivial spatial correlations between proton constituents, considered in this work to be gluonic hot spots, on the initial conditions of proton-proton collisions from ISR to LHC energies, i.e. $\sqrt s\!=\!52.6,7000,13000$ GeV. The inclusion of these correlations is motivated by their fundamental role in the description of a recently observed new feature of $pp$ scattering at $\sqrt s\!=\!7$ TeV, the hollowness effect. Our analysis relies on a Monte-Carlo Glauber approach including fluctuations in the hot spot positions and their entropy deposition in the transverse plane. We explore both the energy dependence and the effect of spatial correlations on the number of wounded hot spots, their spatial distribution and the eccentricities, $\varepsilon_n$, of the initial state geometry of the collision. In minimum bias collisions we find that the inclusion of short range repulsive correlations between the hot spots reduces the value of the eccentricity ($\varepsilon_2$) and the triangularity ($\varepsilon_3$). In turn, upon considering only the events with the highest entropy deposition i.e. the ultra-central ones, the probability of having larger $\varepsilon_{2,3}$ increases significantly in the correlated scenario. Finally, the eccentricities show a quite mild energy dependence.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2016

Hot spots and the hollowness of proton-proton interactions at high energies

We present a dynamical explanation of the hollowness effect observed in proton-proton scattering at $\sqrt s\!=\!7$ TeV. This phenomenon, not observed at lower energies, consists in a depletion of the inelasticity density at zero impact parameter of the collision. Our analysis is based on three main ingredients: we rely gluonic hot spots inside the proton as effective degrees of freedom for the description of the scattering process. Next we assume that some non-trivial correlation between the transverse positions of the hot spots inside the proton exists. Finally we build the scattering amplitude from a multiple scattering, Glauber-like series of collisions between hot spots. In our approach, the onset of the hollowness effect is naturally explained as due to the diffusion or growth of the hot spots in the transverse plane with increasing collision energy.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

The neutrino-nucleon cross section at UHE and its astrophysical implications

We present a quantitative study of the $νN$ cross section in the neutrino energy range $10^4<E_ν<10^{14}$ GeV within two transversal QCD approaches: NLO DGLAP evolution using different sets of PDFs and BK small-$x$ evolution with running coupling and kinematical corrections. We show that the non-linear effects embodied in the BK equation yield a slower raise in the cross section for $E_ν\gtrsim 10^{8}$ GeV than the usual DGLAP based calculation. Finally, we translate this theoretical uncertainty into upper bounds for the ultra-high-energy neutrino flux for different experiments.

hep-ph↗