Probing nuclear matter with jets

Abstract

Jet physics in relativistic heavy ion collisions, which combines perturbative QCD jet production with quark and gluon energy loss and in-medium parton shower modification, has emerged as a powerful tool to probe the properties of strongly-interacting matter formed in high-energy nuclear reactions. We present selected results for the modification of jet cross sections and related observables in the ambiance of hot and/or dense nuclear medium. We focus on the inclusive jet spectrum and dijets [$\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_s^3)$], and $Z^0/{\gamma }^{\ast }$ tagged jets [$\mathcal{O}(G_F{\alpha }_s^2)$] in the framework of perturbative QCD.

Comments: talk given at the 5th international conference on Hard and Electromagnetic Probes of High Energy nuclear Collisions (Hard Probes 2012), May 27th - June 1st, Caglirai (Italy), 4 pages, 4 figures