Momentum imbalance of isolated photon-tagged jet production at RHIC and LHC

Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Apr 5;110(14):142001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.142001. Epub 2013 Apr 2.

Abstract

In collisions of ultrarelativistic nuclei, photon-tagged jets provide a unique opportunity to compare jet production and modification due to parton shower formation and propagation in strongly interacting matter at vastly different center-of-mass energies. We present first results for the cross sections of jets tagged by an isolated photon to O(α(em)α(s)(2)) in central Au+Au reactions with sqrt[s(NN)] = 200 GeV at RHIC and central Pb + Pb reactions with sqrt[s(NN)] = 2.76 TeV at LHC. We evaluate the increase in the transverse momentum imbalance of the observed γ + jet state, induced by the dissipation of the parton shower energy due to strong final-state interactions. Theoretical predictions to help interpret recent and upcoming experimental data are presented.