arXiv subjects

Daniel Pablos

Publications and source records attributed to Daniel Pablos.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Predictions for the sPHENIX physics program

sPHENIX is a next-generation detector experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, designed for a broad set of jet and heavy-flavor probes of the Quark-Gluon Plasma created in heavy ion collisions. In anticipation of the commissioning and first data-taking of the detector in 2023, a RIKEN-BNL Research Center (RBRC) workshop was organized to collect theoretical input and identify compelling aspects of the physics program. This paper compiles theoretical predictions from the workshop participants for jet quenching, heavy flavor and quarkonia, cold QCD, and bulk physics measurements at sPHENIX.

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arXiv2023

Simultaneous minijets and QGP evolution

Minijets traversing through the QGP formed in heavy-ion collisions deposit significant amount of energy in the bulk medium. They also create gradients in temperatures which alter the flow profile and enhance entropy production. We study the effects of minijets in a simultaneous hydro + jet framework and find that inclusion of minijets requires recalibration of transport properties extracted from the model-to-data comparisons.

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arXiv2023

Heavy-flavor transport and hadronization in a small fireball

We study heavy-flavor hadron production in high-energy pp collisions, assuming the formation of a small, deconfined and expanding fireball where charm quarks can undergo rescattering and hadronization. We adopt the same in-medium hadronization mechanism developed for heavy-ion collisions, which involves Local Color-Neutralization (LCN) through recombination of charm quarks with nearby opposite color charges from the background fireball. Diquark excitations in the hot medium favor the formation of charmed baryons. The recombination process, involving closely aligned partons from the same fluid cell, effectively transfers the collective flow of the system to the final charmed hadrons. This framework can qualitatively reproduce the observed experimental findings in heavy-flavor particle-yield ratios, $p_T$-spectra and elliptic-flow coefficients. Our results provide new, complementary support to the idea that the collective phenomena observed in small systems have the same origin as those observed in heavy-ion collisions.

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arXiv2023

Isolating perturbative QCD splittings in heavy-ion collisions

We define a new strategy to scan jet substructure in heavy-ion collisions. The scope is multifold: (i) test the dominance of vacuum jet dynamics at early times, (ii) capture the transition from coherent to incoherent jet energy loss, and (iii) study elastic scatterings in the medium, which are either hard and perturbative or soft and responsible for jet thermalisation. To achieve that, we analyse the angular distribution of the hardest splitting, $θ_{\rm hard}$, above a transverse momentum scale, $k_t^{\rm min}$, in high-$p_t$ jets. Sufficiently high values of $k_t^{\rm min}$ target the regime in which the observable is uniquely determined by vacuum-like splittings and energy loss, leaving the jet substructure unmodified compared to proton-proton collisions. Decreasing $k_t^{\rm min}$ enhances the sensitivity to the relation between energy loss and the intra-jet structure and, in particular, to observe signatures of colour decoherence at small angles. At wider angles it also becomes sensitive to hard elastic scatterings with the medium and, therefore, the perturbative regime of medium response. Choosing $k_t^{\rm min}\approx 0$ leads to order one effects of non-perturbative origin such as hadronisation and, potentially, soft scatterings responsible for jet thermalisation. We perform a comprehensive analysis of this observable with three state-of-the-art jet-quenching Monte Carlo event generators. Our study paves the way for defining jet observables in heavy-ion collisions dominated by perturbative QCD and thus calculable from first principles.

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arXiv2023

Jet suppression and azimuthal anisotropy at RHIC and LHC

Jets are multi-partonic systems that develop before interactions with the quark-gluon plasma set in and lead to energy loss and modifications of their substructure. Jet modification depends on the degree to which the medium can resolve the internal jet structure that is dictated by the physics of coherence governed by a critical angle $θ_c$. Using resummed quenching weights that incorporate the IOE framework for medium-induced radiation and embedding the system into a realistic heavy-ion environment we compute the dependence of jet suppression on the cone angle $R$ of the jet, both at RHIC and the LHC. At RHIC kinematics we see a very mild cone angle dependence for the range of $R$ studied, similar to what was found at the LHC. We also present results for the jet azimuthal anisotropy $v_2$ as a function of $R$. We observe that as centrality is decreased, $v_2$ for moderate $R$ jets sequentially collapse towards the result for small $R = 0.1$. The reason of this sequential grouping is the evolution of $θ_c$ with centrality due to its strong dependence on the in-medium traversed length. For jets with $R > θ_c$, traversing shorter lengths within the medium will make a larger difference than for jets with $R < θ_c$, since the size of the resolved phase-space over which quenching weights are resummed will be reduced. For this reason, $v_2(R)$ is quite sensitive to the typical value of $θ_c$ at a given centrality.

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arXiv2023

Studying QGP transport properties in a concurrent minijet+hydro framework

Minijets are ubiquitous in heavy-ion collision experiments. However, they are often excluded from the hydrodynamic simulations of QGP as they do not thermalize at short time scales and are not treated as part of the collective medium. Using a concurrent jet+hydro framework, we show that the minijets could account for a significant portion of particle multiplicity. Therefore, the energy deposition from minijet-medium interactions can substantially modify the QGP transport properties inferred from model-to-data comparisons.

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arXiv2023

Heavy-flavor transport and hadronization in pp collisions

Recent experimental results on the Lambda_c/D^0 ratio in proton-proton collisions have revealed a significant enhancement compared to expectations based on universal fragmentation fractions/functions across different colliding systems, from e+e- to pp. This unexpected enhancement has sparked speculation about the potential effects of a deconfined medium impacting hadronization, previously considered exclusive to heavy-ion collisions. In this study, we propose a novel approach that assumes the formation of a small, deconfined, and expanding fireball even in pp collisions, where charm quarks can undergo rescattering and hadronization. We make use of the same in-medium hadronization mechanism developed for heavy-ion collisions, which involves local color-neutralization through recombination of charm quarks with nearby opposite color charges from the background fireball. Our model incorporates the presence of diquark excitations in the hot medium, which promotes the formation of charmed baryons. Moreover, the recombination process, involving closely aligned partons from the same fluid cell, effectively transfers the collective flow of the system to the final charmed hadrons. We show that this framework can qualitatively reproduce the observed experimental findings in heavy-flavor particle-yield ratios, $p_T$-spectra and elliptic-flow coefficients. Our results provide new, complementary supporting evidence that the collective phenomena observed in small systems naturally have the same origin as those observed in heavy-ion collisions

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arXiv2022

Charmed hadron production in high-energy nuclear collisions

We present a new model for the description of heavy-flavor hadronization in high-energy nuclear (and possibly hadronic) collisions, where the process takes place not in the vacuum, but in the presence of other color charges. We explore its effect on the charmed hadron yields and kinematic distributions once the latter is applied at the end of transport calculations used to simulate the propagation of heavy quarks in the deconfined fireball produced in nuclear collisions. The model is based on the formation of color-singlet clusters through the recombination of charm quarks with light antiquarks or diquarks from the same fluid cell. This local mechanism of color neutralization leads to a strong space-momentum correlation, which provides a substantial enhancement of charmed baryon production -- with respect to expectations based on $e^+e^-$ collisions -- and of the collective flow of all charmed hadrons. We also discuss the similarities between our model and recently developed mechanisms implemented in QCD event generators to simulate medium corrections to hadronization in the presence of other nearby color charges.

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arXiv2022

Mini-jet quenching in a concurrent jet+hydro evolution and the non-equilibrium quark-gluon plasma

Mini-jets, created by perturbative hard QCD collisions at moderate energies, can represent a significant portion of the total multiplicity of a heavy-ion collision event. Since their transverse momenta are initially larger than the typical saturation scale describing the bulk of the equilibrating QGP, their typical stopping distances are larger than the usual hydrodynamization time, so they do not in general hydrodynamize at the same pace than the bulk of the collision. Therefore, in general mini-jets cannot be described solely by a unique pre-equilibrium stage that bridges the initial, over-occupied glasma state, with the hydrodynamical evolution. In this work we make use of a new concurrent mini-jet+hydrodynamic framework in which the properties of the hydrodynamically evolving QGP are modified due to the injection of energy and momentum from the mini-jets. We study the system for different choices of the minimum transverse momentum associated to mini-jet production. In order to achieve a realistic description of charged particle multiplicity, the amount of entropy associated to the low-$x$ initial state needs to be reduced. Moreover, the fact that the injected momentum from the randomly oriented mini-jets is not correlated with the spatial gradients of the system reduces overall flow, and the value of the QGP transport coefficients needs to be reduced accordingly. They are an important new source of fluctuations, resulting in a spikier, notably modified hydrodynamical evolution. We discuss the impact of the mini-jets on a number of observables, such as $p_T$ spectra and $p_T$-differential flow $v_n$ for a wide range of centrality classes. In contrast to elliptic, triangular or quadrangular flow, we find that directed flow, $v_1$, has the strongest potential to discriminate between different mini-jet production rates.

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arXiv2022

Pushing forward jet substructure measurements in heavy-ion collisions

Energetic jets that traverse the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions serve as excellent probes to study this new state of deconfined QCD matter. Presently, however, our ability to achieve a crisp theoretical interpretation of the crescent number of jet observables measured in experiments is hampered by the presence of selection biases. The aim of this work is to minimise those selection biases associated to the modification of the quark- vs. gluon-initiated jet fraction in order to assess the presence of other medium-induced effects, namely color decoherence, by exploring the rapidity dependence of jet substructure observables. So far, all jet substructure measurements at mid-rapidity have shown that heavy-ion jets are narrower than vacuum jets. We show both analytically and with Monte Carlo simulations that if the narrowing effect persists at forward rapidities, where the quark-initiated jet fraction is greatly increased, this could serve as an unambiguous experimental observation of color decoherence dynamics in heavy-ion collisions.

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arXiv2022

Jet tomography in heavy ion collisions with deep learning

Deep learning techniques have the power to identify the degree of modification of high energy jets traversing deconfined QCD matter on a jet-by-jet basis. Such knowledge allows us to study jets based on their initial, rather than final energy. We show how this new technique provides unique access to the genuine configuration profile of jets over the transverse plane of the nuclear collision, both with respect to their production point and their orientation. Effectively removing the selection biases induced by final-state interactions, one can in this way analyse the potential azimuthal anisotropies of jet production associated to initial-state effects. Additionally, we demonstrate the capability of our new method to locate with precision the production point of a dijet pair in the nuclear overlap region, in what constitutes an important step forward towards the long term quest of using jets as tomographic probes of the quark-gluon plasma.

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arXiv2022

Classification of quark and gluon jets in hot QCD medium with deep learning

Deep learning techniques have shown the capability to identify the degree of energy loss of high-energy jets traversing hot QCD medium on a jet-by-jet basis. The average amount of quenching of quark and gluon jets in hot QCD medium actually have different characteristics, such as their dependence on the in-medium traversed length and the early-developed jet substructures in the evolution. These observations motivate us to consider these two types of jets separately and classify them from jet images with deep learning techniques. We find that the classification performance gradually decreases with increasing degree of jet modification. In addition, we discuss the predictive power of different jet observables, such as the jet shape, jet fragmentation function, jet substructures as well as their combinations, in order to address the interpretability of the classification task.

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arXiv2022

Jet tomography in hot QCD medium with deep learning

With deep learning techniques, the degree of modification of energetic jets that traversed hot QCD medium can be identified on a jet-by-jet basis. Due to the strong correlations between the degree of jet modification and its traversed length in the medium, we demonstrate the power of our novel method to locate the creation point of a dijet pair in the nuclear overlap region. In particular, jet properties, such as jet width and orientation can serve as additional handles to locate the creation points to a higher level of precision, which constitutes a significant development towards the long-standing goal of using jets as tomographic probes of the quark-gluon plasma.

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arXiv2021

Jet Wake from Linearized Hydrodynamics

We explore how to improve the hybrid model description of the particles originating from the wake that a jet produced in a heavy ion collision leaves in the droplet of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) through which it propagates, using linearized hydrodynamics on a background Bjorken flow. Jet energy and momentum loss described by the hybrid model become currents sourcing linearized hydrodynamics. By solving the linearized hydrodynamic equations numerically, we investigate the development of the wake in the dynamically evolving droplet of QGP, study the effect of viscosity, scrutinize energy-momentum conservation, and check the validity of the linear approximation. We find that linearized hydrodynamics works better in the viscous case because diffusive modes damp the energy-momentum perturbation produced by the jet. We calculate the distribution of particles produced from the jet wake by using the Cooper-Frye prescription and find that both the transverse momentum spectrum and the distribution of particles in azimuthal angle are similar in shape in linearized hydrodynamics and in the hybrid model. Their normalizations are different because the momentum-rapidity distribution in the linearized hydrodynamics analysis is more spread out, due to sound modes. Since the Bjorken flow has no transverse expansion, we explore the effect of transverse flow by using local boosts to add it into the Cooper-Frye formula. After including the effects of transverse flow in this way, the transverse momentum spectrum becomes harder: more particles with transverse momenta bigger than $2$ GeV are produced than in the hybrid model. Although we defer implementing this analysis in a jet Monte Carlo, as would be needed to make quantitative comparisons to data, we gain a qualitative sense of how the jet wake may modify jet observables by computing proxies for two example observables: the lost energy recovered in a cone of varying open angle, and the fragmentation function. We find that linearized hydrodynamics with transverse flow effects added improves the description of the jet wake in the hybrid model in just the way that comparison to data indicates is needed. Our study illuminates a path to improving the description of the wake in the hybrid model, highlighting the need to take into account the effects of both transverse flow and the broadening of the energy-momentum perturbation in spacetime rapidity on particle production.

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arXiv2021

Deep learning jet modifications in heavy-ion collisions

Jet interactions in a hot QCD medium created in heavy-ion collisions are conventionally assessed by measuring the modification of the distributions of jet observables with respect to the proton-proton baseline. However, the steeply falling production spectrum introduces a strong bias toward small energy losses that obfuscates a direct interpretation of the impact of medium effects in the measured jet ensemble. Modern machine learning techniques offer the potential to tackle this issue on a jet-by-jet basis. In this paper, we employ a convolutional neural network (CNN) to diagnose such modifications from jet images where the training and validation is performed using the hybrid strong/weak coupling model. By analyzing measured jets in heavy-ion collisions, we extract the original jet transverse momentum, i.e., the transverse momentum of an identical jet that did not pass through a medium, in terms of an energy loss ratio. Despite many sources of fluctuations, we achieve good performance and put emphasis on the interpretability of our results. We observe that the angular distribution of soft particles in the jet cone and their relative contribution to the total jet energy contain significant discriminating power, which can be exploited to tailor observables that provide a good estimate of the energy loss ratio. With a well-predicted energy loss ratio, we study a set of jet observables to estimate their sensitivity to bias effects and reveal their medium modifications when compared to a more equivalent jet population, i.e., a set of jets with similar initial energy. Finally, we also show the potential of deep learning techniques in the analysis of the geometrical aspects of jet quenching such as the in-medium traversed length or the position of the hard scattering in the transverse plane, opening up new possibilities for tomographic studies.

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arXiv2021

Cone size dependence of jet suppression in heavy-ion collisions

The strong suppression of high-$p_T$ jets in heavy ion collisions is a result of elastic and inelastic energy loss suffered by the jet multi-prong collection of color charges that are resolved by medium interactions. Hence, quenching effects depend on the fluctuations of the jet substructure that are probed by the cone size dependence of the spectrum. In this letter, we present the first complete, analytic calculation of the inclusive $R$-dependent jet spectrum in PbPb collisions at LHC energies, including resummation of energy loss effects from hard, vacuum-like emissions occurring in the medium and modeling of soft energy flow and recovery at the jet cone. Both the geometry of the collision and the local medium properties, such as the temperature and fluid velocity, are given by a hydrodynamic evolution of the medium, leaving only the coupling constant in the medium as a free parameter. The calculation yields a good description of the centrality and $p_T$ dependence of jet suppression for $R=0.4$ together with a mild cone size dependence, which is in agreement with recent experimental results. Gauging the theoretical uncertainties, we find that the largest sensitivity resides in the leading logarithmic approximation of the phase space of resolved splittings, which can be improved systematically, while non-perturbative modeling of the soft-gluon sector is of relatively minor importance up to large cone sizes.

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arXiv2020

Cone-size dependent jet spectrum in heavy-ion collisions

Jets in the vacuum correspond to multi-parton configurations that form via a branching process sensitive to the soft and collinear divergences of QCD. In heavy-ion collisions, energy loss processes that are stimulated via interactions with the medium, affect jet observables in a profound way. Jet fragmentation factorizes into a three-stage process, involving vacuum-like emissions above the medium scale, induced emissions enhanced by the medium length and, finally, long-distance vacuum-like fragmentation. This formalism leads to a novel, non-linear resummation of jet energy loss. In this talk we present new results on the combined effects of small-$R$ resummation and energy loss to compute the $R$-dependent jet spectrum in heavy-ion collisions.

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arXiv2020

Resolving the spacetime structure of jets with medium

Away from the strictly soft and collinear limit of QCD radiation the choice of evolution scale in a parton shower algorithm is ambiguous and several options have been implemented in existing Monte Carlo event generators for proton-proton collisions. However, the resulting space-time evolution could result in subtle differences depending on the particular choice. In this work we quantify measurable consequences of the choice of the evolution variable and show how the implications of such a choice propagates into jet quenching observables. We develop a parton shower algorithm for a general evolution variable, that includes as special cases the virtuality, angle, transverse momentum and formation time. We study the interplay between the shower history for different evolution variables and the phase space affected by parton energy loss. In particular, we implement effects of jet quenching in the dense limit and highlight the role of color coherence effects. We compare the results of the different ordering variables to existing Monte Carlo shower implementations on the parton level by analyzing primary Lund planes. Finally, we study the sensitivity of quenched jets to the choice of evolution variable by confronting our results for a certain key observable, such as the jet mass.

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