Inclusive transverse momentum distribution of hadrons in jets produced in PbPb and pp collisions at the LHC: Data versus jet-quenching Monte Carlos

Abstract

The inclusive transverse momentum (pt) distribution of hadrons inside jets produced in PbPb and pp collisions are simulated with the YaJEM and Pythia 6 Monte Carlo (MC) event generators. The effects of jet quenching are studied via the ratios of PbPb over pp hadron pt spectra, either by accounting for the induced virtuality Delta Q^2 transferred from the strongly-interacting medium to the parton shower or by modifying the soft sector of the parton-to-hadron fragmentation functions. The MC results are compared to experimental jet data measured by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV in four jet p_T^{jet} ranges above 100 GeV, accounting or not for the experimental jet reconstruction biases. The level of data-MC (dis)agreement provides valuable information on the mechanism of parton energy loss.

Comments: 6 pages and 2 figures