Nuclear Physics Seminar

Jet quenching, i.e. the suppression of high transverse momentum (pT) hadron production in heavy-ion collisions relative to the scaled expectation from p-p collisions has long been investigated as one of the key observables of the heavy ion physics program. In principle, jet quenching has the potential to probe important properties of the medium created in heavy-ion collisions. Past efforts to study hard processes in the medium have mainly been focused on single hard hadron production. In such events, most of the energy flux is carried by a single parton, and a theoretical description in terms of partonic energy loss is meaningful.
However, in most hard events rather a shower of multiple semi-hard and soft partons is created which fragments into a jet of hadrons. Recent progress in jet finding algorithms have brought the study of jet properties into the realm of heavy-ion physics. On the theoretical side, jet observables are becoming accessible via Monte Carlo codes simulating in-medium shower evolutions. In this talk, I review the connection between energy loss physics and in-medium shower physics and report on some recent advances in the simulation of medium-modified jets.