Measurement of angular and momentum distributions of charged particles within and around jets in Pb+Pb and pp collisions at √sNN =5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Collaboration, ATLAS and Barton, A.E. and Bertram, I.A. and Borissov, G. and Bouhova-Thacker, E.V. and Fox, H. and Henderson, R.C.W. and Jones, R.W.L. and Kartvelishvili, V. and Long, R.E. and Love, P.A. and Muenstermann, D. and Parker, A.J. and Sanderswood, Izaac and Smizanska, M. and Tee, A.S. and Walder, J. and Wharton, A.M. and Whitmore, B.W. and Yexley, Melissa (2019) Measurement of angular and momentum distributions of charged particles within and around jets in Pb+Pb and pp collisions at √sNN =5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector. Physical Review C, 100 (6): 064901. ISSN 0556-2813

Abstract

Studies of the fragmentation of jets into charged particles in heavy-ion collisions can provide information about the mechanism of jet quenching by the hot and dense QCD matter created in such collisions, the quark-gluon plasma. This paper presents a measurement of the angular distribution of charged particles around the jet axis in √sNN=5.02 TeV Pb+Pb and pp collisions, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The Pb+Pb and pp data sets have integrated luminosities of 0.49nb−1 and 25pb−1, respectively. The measurement is performed for jets reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with radius parameter R=0.4 and is extended to an angular distance of r=0.8 from the jet axis. Results are presented as a function of Pb+Pb collision centrality and distance from the jet axis for charged particles with transverse momenta in the 1- to 63-GeV range, matched to jets with transverse momenta in the 126- to 316-GeV range and an absolute value of jet rapidity of less than 1.7. Modifications to the measured distributions are quantified by taking a ratio to the measurements in pp collisions. Yields of charged particles with transverse momenta below 4 GeV are observed to be increasingly enhanced as a function of angular distance from the jet axis, reaching a maximum at r=0.6. Charged particles with transverse momenta above 4 GeV have an enhanced yield in Pb+Pb collisions in the jet core for angular distances up to r=0.05 from the jet axis, with a suppression at larger distances.