arXiv subjects

Shanshan Cao

Publications and source records attributed to Shanshan Cao.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Longitudinal dependence of open heavy flavor $R_\text{AA}$ in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Heavy flavor probes are sensitive to the properties of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. A huge amount of effort has been devoted to studying different aspects of the heavy-ion collisions using heavy flavor particles. In this work, we study the dynamics of heavy quark transport in the QGP medium using the rapidity dependence of heavy flavor observables. We calculate the nuclear modification of $\text{B}$ and $\text{D}$ meson spectra as well as spectra of leptons from heavy flavor decays in the rapidity range $[-4.0,4.0]$. We use an implementation of the improved Langevin equation with gluon radiation on top of a (3+1)-dimensional relativistic viscous hydrodynamical background for several collision setups. We find that the rapidity dependence of the heavy quark modification is determined by the interplay between the smaller size of the medium, which affects the path length of the heavy quarks, and the softer heavy quark initial production spectrum. We compare our results with available experimental data and present predictions for open heavy flavor meson $R_\text{AA}$ at finite rapidity.

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arXiv2019

Optimal Shape Control via $L_\infty$ Loss for Composite Fuselage Assembly

Shape control is critical to ensure the quality of composite fuselage assembly. In current practice, the structures are adjusted to the design shape in terms of the $\ell_2$ loss for further assembly without considering the existing dimensional gap between two structures. Such practice has two limitations: (1) the design shape may not be the optimal shape in terms of a pair of incoming fuselages with different incoming dimensions; (2) the maximum gap is the key concern during the fuselage assembly process. This paper proposes an optimal shape control methodology via the $\ell_\infty$ loss for composite fuselage assembly process by considering the existing dimensional gap between the incoming pair of fuselages. Besides, due to the limitation on the number of available actuators in practice, we face an important problem of finding the best locations for the actuators among many potential locations, which makes the problem a sparse estimation problem. We are the first to solve the optimal shape control in fuselage assembly process using the $\ell_\infty$ model under the framework of sparse estimation, where we use the $\ell_1$ penalty to control the sparsity of the resulting estimator. From statistical point of view, this can be formulated as the $\ell_\infty$ loss based linear regression, and under some standard assumptions, such as the restricted eigenvalue (RE) conditions, and the light tailed noise, the non-asymptotic estimation error of the $\ell_1$ regularized $\ell_\infty$ linear model is derived to be the order of $O(σ\sqrt{\frac{S\log p}{n}})$, which meets the upper-bound in the existing literature. Compared to the current practice, the case study shows that our proposed method significantly reduces the maximum gap between two fuselages after shape adjustments.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2019

Flavor hierarchy of jet quenching in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Relativistic heavy-ion experiments have observed similar quenching effects for (prompt) $D$ mesons compared to charged hadrons for transverse momenta larger than 6-8~GeV, which remains a mystery since heavy quarks typically lose less energies in quark-gluon plasma than light quarks and gluons. Recent measurements of the nuclear modification factors of $B$ mesons and $B$-decayed $D$ mesons by the CMS Collaboration provide a unique opportunity to study the flavor hierarchy of jet quenching. Using a linear Boltzmann transport model combined with hydrodynamics simulation, we study the energy loss and nuclear modification for heavy and light flavor jets in high-energy nuclear collisions. By consistently taking into account both quark and gluon contributions to light and heavy flavor hadron productions within a next-to-leading order perturbative QCD framework, we obtain, for the first time, a satisfactory description of the experimental data on the nuclear modification factors for charged hadrons, $D$ mesons, $B$ mesons and $B$-decayed $D$ mesons simultaneously over a wide range of transverse momenta (8-300~GeV). This presents a solid solution to the flavor puzzle of jet quenching and constitutes a significant step towards the precision study of jet-medium interaction. Our study predicts that at transverse momenta larger than 30-40~GeV, $B$ mesons also exhibit similar suppression effects to charged hadrons and $D$ mesons, which may be tested by future measurements.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Towards the determination of heavy-quark transport coefficients in quark-gluon plasma

Several transport models have been employed in recent years to analyze heavy-flavor meson spectra in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Heavy-quark transport coefficients extracted from these models with their default parameters vary, however, by up to a factor of 5 at high momenta. To investigate the origin of this large theoretical uncertainty, a systematic comparison of heavy-quark transport coefficients is carried out between various transport models. Within a common scheme devised for the nuclear modification factor of charm quarks in a brick medium of a quark-gluon plasma, the systematic uncertainty of the extracted drag coefficient among these models is shown to be reduced to a factor of 2, which can be viewed as the smallest intrinsic systematical error band achievable at present time. This indicates the importance of a realistic hydrodynamic evolution constrained by bulk hadron spectra and of heavy-quark hadronization for understanding the final heavy-flavor hadron spectra and extracting heavy-quark drag coefficient. The transverse transport coefficient is less constrained due to the influence of the underlying mechanism for heavy-quark medium interaction. Additional constraints on transport models such as energy loss fluctuation and transverse-momentum broadening can further reduce theoretical uncertainties in the extracted transport coefficients.

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arXiv2019

Interplaying mechanisms behind single inclusive jet suppression in heavy-ion collisions

The suppression factor for single inclusive jets in Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has a weak dependence on the transverse momentum $p_T$ and remains almost the same at two colliding energies, $\sqrt{s}=2.76$ and 5.02 TeV, though the central rapidity density of bulk hadrons increases by about 20\%. This phenomenon is investigated within the Linear Boltzmann Transport (LBT) model, which includes elastic and inelastic processes based on perturbative QCD for both jet shower and recoil medium partons as they propagate through a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). With the dynamic evolution of the QGP given by the 3+1D CLVisc hydrodynamic model with event-by-event fully fluctuating initial conditions, single inclusive jet suppression in Pb+Pb collisions from LBT agrees well with experimental data. The weak $\sqrt{s}$ and $p_T$-dependence of the jet suppression factor at LHC are found to result directly from the $\sqrt{s}$-dependence of the initial jet $p_T$ spectra and slow $p_T$-dependence of the jet energy loss. Contributions from jet-induced medium response, influence of radial expansion, both of which depend on jet-cone size, and jet flavor composition all conjoin to give a slow $p_T$-dependence of jet energy loss and the single jet suppression factor $R_{\rm AA}$, their dependence on $\sqrt{s}$ and jet-cone size. Single inclusive jet suppression at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV is also predicted that actually decreases slightly with $p_T$ in the $p_T<50$ GeV/$c$ range because of the steeper initial jet spectra though the $p_T$-dependence of the jet energy loss is weaker than that at LHC.

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arXiv2019

Effects of drag induced radiation and multi-stage evolution on heavy quark energy loss

Heavy quarks serve as ideal probes of the QGP properties produced in energetic nuclear collisions, and provide a unique opportunity to study the mass effects on parton energy loss. We develop a multi-stage approach for heavy quark evolution inside the QGP, in which heavy quarks first undergo a rare-scattering multiple-emission evolution at momenta large compared to their mass (sensitive only to the transverse diffusion coefficient $\hat{q}$ ), and then evolve through a single-scattering induced emission (Gunion-Bertsch) stage at momenta comparable to their mass [sensitive to not only $\hat{q}$, but also the longitudinal drag $\hat{e}$ and diffusion $\hat{e}_2$ coefficients]. This multi-stage approach is coupled to a (2+1)-D viscous hydrodynamic model for a quantitative investigation of charm vs. beauty quark energy loss inside the QGP. Based on this approach, we find that drag induced radiation has a considerable impact on the energy loss of intermediate $p_T$ massive beauty quarks. This effect increases the suppression of B mesons and narrows the difference between the $R_{AA}$ of B and D mesons. Our results are consistent with the experimental data at the LHC and contribute to a more quantitative understanding of the transverse momentum dependence of the mass hierarchy of parton energy loss inside the QGP.

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arXiv2019

Medium modified leading hadrons, jets and sub-jets in a single formalism

Vacuum and medium modified fragmentation functions are used to study the properties of hadrons produced in hard interactions, in $p$-$p$ and $A$-$A$ collisions, respectively. We study the modification of reconstructed jets and high transverse momentum (high-$p_\mathrm{T}$) hadrons as they propagate through a dense medium. Jets and jet modification are studied within the framework of a factorized jet function. The vacuum jet function is found consistent with PYTHIA simulations. Both the modification of the fragmentation function and the jet function are carried out within the identical higher-twist energy loss formalism. This approach is then extended to di-hadron production within a jet. Its further extension to a "di-prong" function and its application to the soft-drop measurements are discussed. The methodology of extending these semi-analytical calculations to full Monte-Carlo simulations is outlined. All calculations are carried out within a (2+1)-D viscous hydrodynamic simulation and compared to experimental data from a variety of collision energies.

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arXiv2018

A Unifying Framework of High-Dimensional Sparse Estimation with Difference-of-Convex (DC) Regularizations

Under the linear regression framework, we study the variable selection problem when the underlying model is assumed to have a small number of nonzero coefficients (i.e., the underlying linear model is sparse). Non-convex penalties in specific forms are well-studied in the literature for sparse estimation. A recent work \cite{ahn2016difference} has pointed out that nearly all existing non-convex penalties can be represented as difference-of-convex (DC) functions, which can be expressed as the difference of two convex functions, while itself may not be convex. There is a large existing literature on the optimization problems when their objectives and/or constraints involve DC functions. Efficient numerical solutions have been proposed. Under the DC framework, directional-stationary (d-stationary) solutions are considered, and they are usually not unique. In this paper, we show that under some mild conditions, a certain subset of d-stationary solutions in an optimization problem (with a DC objective) has some ideal statistical properties: namely, asymptotic estimation consistency, asymptotic model selection consistency, asymptotic efficiency. The aforementioned properties are the ones that have been proven by many researchers for a range of proposed non-convex penalties in the sparse estimation. Our assumptions are either weaker than or comparable with those conditions that have been adopted in other existing works. This work shows that DC is a nice framework to offer a unified approach to these existing work where non-convex penalty is involved. Our work bridges the communities of optimization and statistics.

math.ST↗

arXiv2018

E-by-e jet suppression, anisotropy, medium response and hard-soft tomography

The Linear Boltzmann Transport (LBT) model for jet propagation and interaction in quark-gluon plasma (QGP) has been used to study jet quenching in high-energy heavy-lion collisions. The suppression of single inclusive jet production, medium modification of $γ$-jet correlation, jet profiles and fragmentation functions as observed in experiments at Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can be described well by LBT in which jet-induced medium response is shown to play an essential role. In event-by-event simulations of jet quenching within LBT, jet azimuthal anisotropies are found to correlate linearly with the anisotropic flows of bulk hadrons from the underlying hydrodynamic events.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2018

Cracking the difference of estimating heavy quark transport coefficients in a Quark-Gluon Plasma

Heavy flavor observables provide valuable information on the properties of the hot and dense Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions. Various microscopic models have successfully described many of the observables associated with its formation. Their transport coefficients differ, however, due to different assumptions about the underlying interaction of the heavy quarks with the plasma constituents, different initial geometries and formation times, different hadronization processes and a different time evolution of the QGP. In this study we present the transport coefficients of all these models and investigate systematically how some of these assumptions influence the heavy quark properties at the end of the QGP expansion. For this purpose we impose on these models the same initial condition and the same model for the QGP expansion and show that both have considerable influence on $R_{AA}$ and $v_2$.

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arXiv2018

Multiple jets and $γ$-jet correlation in high-energy heavy-ion collisions

$γ$-jet production is considered one of the best probes of the hot quark-gluon plasma in high-energy heavy-ion collisions since the direct $γ$ can be used to gauge the initial energy and momentum of the associated jet. This is investigated within the Linear Boltzmann Transport (LBT) model for jet propagation and jet-induced medium excitation. With both parton energy loss and medium response from jet-medium interaction included, LBT can describe experimental data well on $γ$-jet correlation in Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Multiple jets associated with direct $γ$ production are found to contribute significantly to $γ$-jet correlation at small $p_T^{\rm jet}<p_T^γ$ and large azimuthal angle relative to the opposite direction of $γ$. Jet medium interaction not only suppresses the leading jet at large $p_T^{\rm jet}$ but also sub-leading jets at large azimuthal angle. This effectively leads to the narrowing of $γ$-jet correlation in azimuthal angle instead of broadening due to jet-medium interaction. The $γ$-jet profile on the other hand will be broadened due to jet-medium interaction and jet-induced medium response. Energy flow measurements relative to the direct photon is illustrated to reflect well the broadening and jet-induced medium response.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Effects of jet-induced medium excitation in $γ$-hadron correlation in A+A collisions

Coupled Linear Boltzmann Transport and hydrodynamics (CoLBT-hydro) is developed for co-current and event-by-event simulations of jet transport and jet-induced medium excitation (j.i.m.e.) in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. This is made possible by a GPU parallelized (3+1)D hydrodynamics that has a source term from the energy-momentum deposition by propagating jet shower partons and provides real time update of the bulk medium evolution for subsequent jet transport. Hadron spectra in $γ$-jet events of A+A collisions at RHIC and LHC are calculated for the first time that include hadrons from both the modified jet and j.i.m.e.. CoLBT-hydro describes well experimental data at RHIC on the suppression of leading hadrons due to parton energy loss. It also predicts the enhancement of soft hadrons from j.i.m.e. The onset of soft hadron enhancement occurs at a constant transverse momentum due to the thermal nature of soft hadrons from j.i.m.e. which also have a significantly broadened azimuthal distribution relative to the jet direction. Soft hadrons in the $γ$ direction are, on the other hand, depleted due to a diffusion wake behind the jet.

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arXiv2017

Drag Induced Radiation and Multi-Stage Effects in Heavy-Flavor Energy Loss

It is argued that heavy-quarks traversing a Quark Gluon Plasma, undergo a multi-stage modification process, similar to the case of light flavors. Such an approach is applied to heavy-quark energy loss, which includes a rare-scattering, multiple emission formalism at momenta large compared to the mass (sensitive only to the transverse diffusion coefficient $\hat{q}$), and a single scattering induced emission formalism (Gunion-Bertsch) at momenta comparable to the mass of the quark [sensitive to $\hat{q}$, and the longitudinal drag ($\hat{e}$) and diffusion ($\hat{e}_2$) coefficients]. The application of such a multi-stage approach within a 2+1D viscous fluid-dynamical simulation leads to simultaneous agreement with experimental data for the nuclear modification factor of both $B$ and $D$ mesons, as measured by the CMS collaboration at the LHC. The extracted transport coefficients are found to be consistent with those for light flavors.

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arXiv2017

A data-driven analysis for the temperature and momentum dependence of the heavy quark diffusion coefficient in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

By applying a Bayesian model-to-data analysis, we estimate the temperature and momentum dependence of the heavy quark diffusion coefficient in an improved Langevin framework. The posterior range of the diffusion coefficient is obtained by performing a Markov chain Monte Carlo random walk and calibrating on the experimental data of $D$-meson $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$ and $v_2$ in three different collision systems at RHIC and the LHC: AuAu collisions at 200 GeV, PbPb collisions at 2.76 and 5.02 TeV. The spatial diffusion coefficient is found to be consistent with lattice QCD calculations and comparable with other models' estimation. We demonstrate the capability of our improved Langevin model to simultaneously describe the $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$ and $v_2$ at both RHIC and the LHC energies, as well as the higher order flow coefficient such as $D$-meson $v_3$. We show that by applying a Bayesian analysis, we are able to quantitatively and systematically study the heavy flavor dynamics in heavy-ion collisions.

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arXiv2017

Probing medium-induced jet splitting and energy loss in heavy-ion collisions

The nuclear modification of jet splitting in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC energies is studied based on the higher twist formalism. Assuming coherent energy loss for the two splitted subjets, a non-monotonic jet energy dependence is found for the nuclear modification of jet splitting function: strongest modification at intermediate jet energies whereas weaker modification for larger or smaller jet energies. Combined with the smaller size and lower density of the QGP medium at RHIC than at the LHC, this explains the CMS-STAR groomed jet puzzle -- strong nuclear modification of the momentum sharing $z_g$ distribution at the LHC whereas no obvious modification of the $z_g$ distribution at RHIC. In contrast, the observed nuclear modification pattern of the groomed jet $z_g$ distribution cannot be explained solely by independent energy loss of the two subjets. Our result may be tested in future measurements of groomed jets with lower jet energies at the LHC and larger jet energies at RHIC, for different angular separations between the two subjets.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Multistage Monte-Carlo simulation of jet modification in a static medium

The modification of hard jets in an extended static medium held at a fixed temperature is studied using three different Monte-Carlo event generators (LBT, MATTER, MARTINI). Each event generator contains a different set of assumptions regarding the energy and virtuality of the partons within a jet versus the energy scale of the medium, and hence, applies to a different epoch in the space-time history of the jet evolution. For the first time, modeling is developed where a jet may sequentially transition from one generator to the next, on a parton-by-parton level, providing a detailed simulation of the space-time evolution of medium modified jets over a much broader dynamic range than has been attempted previously in a single calculation. Comparisons are carried out for different observables sensitive to jet quenching, including the parton fragmentation function and the azimuthal distribution of jet energy around the jet axis. The effect of varying the boundary between different generators is studied and a theoretically motivated criterion for the location of this boundary is proposed. The importance of such an approach with coupled generators to the modeling of jet quenching is discussed.

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arXiv2017

A data-driven analysis of the heavy quark transport coefficient

Using a Bayesian model-to-data analysis, we estimate the temperature dependence of the heavy quark diffusion coefficients by calibrating to the experimental data of $D$-meson $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$ and $v_2$ in AuAu collisions ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV) and PbPb collisions ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76$ TeV)~\cite{Xie:2016iwq}. The spatial diffusion coefficient $D_s2πT$ is found to be mostly constraint around $(1.3-1.5) T_c$ and is compatible with lattice QCD calculations. We demonstrate the capability of our improved Langevin model to simultaneously describe the $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$ and $v_2$ at both RHIC and the LHC energies, as well as the feasibility to apply a Bayesian analysis to quantitatively study the heavy flavor transport in heavy-ion collisions.

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arXiv2017

Heavy and light flavor jet quenching at RHIC and LHC energies

The Linear Boltzmann Transport (LBT) model coupled to hydrodynamical background is extended to include transport of both light partons and heavy quarks through the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. The LBT model includes both elastic and inelastic medium-interaction of both primary jet shower partons and thermal recoil partons within perturbative QCD (pQCD). It is shown to simultaneously describe the experimental data on heavy and light flavor hadron suppression in high-energy heavy-ion collisions for different centralities at RHIC and LHC energies. More detailed investigations within the LBT model illustrate the importance of both initial parton spectra and the shapes of fragmentation functions on the difference between the nuclear modifications of light and heavy flavor hadrons. The dependence of the jet quenching parameter $\hat{q}$ on medium temperature and jet flavor is quantitatively extracted.

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