Photon-tagged correlations in heavy-ion collisions: kinematic requirements and a case study

Photon-tagged correlations may be useful to determine how the dense partonic medium produced in heavy-ion collisions affects the fragmentation of high-energy quarks and gluons into a leading hadron. In these proceedings, I discuss the kinematic requirements for the hadron and the prompt photon transverse momentum cuts. A case study at LHC energy, tagging on p_T > 20 GeV and p_T > 50 GeV photons, is then briefly examined.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (QM2006), Shanghai, China, 14-20 November 200

Quarkonium hadron interaction in QCD

The analytic continuation of the operator product expansion of the scattering amplitude allows to compute the heavy-quarkonium hadron total cross section. The energy dependence of the Upsilon and Upsilon' cross sections with a proton is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Talk given at XXXVIth Rencontres de Moriond: QCD and High Energy Hadronic Interactions, Les Arcs, France, 17-24 March 200

Prompt photon in association with a heavy-quark jet in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC

We present a phenomenological study of the associated production of a prompt photon and a heavy quark jet (charm or bottom) in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC. This channel allows for estimating the amount of energy loss experienced by the charm and bottom quarks propagating in the dense QCD medium produced in those collisions. Calculations are carried out at next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy using the BDMPS-Z heavy-quark quenching weights. The quenching of the single heavy-quark jet spectrum reflects fairly the hierarchy in the heavy quark energy loss assumed in the perturbative calculation. On the contrary, the single photon spectrum in heavy-ion collisions is only modified at low momenta, for which less heavy-quark jets pass the kinematic cuts. On top of single particle spectra, the two-particle final state provides a range of observables (photon-jet pair momentum, jet asymmetry, among others) which are studied in detail. The comparison of the photon-jet pair momentum, from p-p to Pb-Pb collisions, is sensitive to the amount of energy lost by the heavy-quarks and could therefore be used in order to better understand parton energy loss processes in the heavy quark sector.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figures, gzipped tar file. Minor changes, 2 references added. Version published in JHE

Electromagnetic emission from hot medium measured by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC

Electromagnetic radiation has been of interest in heavy ion collisions because they shed light on early stages of the collisions where hadronic probes do not provide direct information since hadronization and hadronic interactions occur later. The latest results on photon measurement from the PHENIX experiment at RHIC reflect thermodynamic properties of the matter produced in the heavy ion collisions. An unexpectedly large positive elliptic flow measured for direct photons can not be explained by any of the current models.Comment: Talk contributed to Rutherford Centennial Conference, Aug 8-12, 2011, held in Manchester, U

Quenching of hadron spectra in DIS on nuclear targets

The multiple scatterings incurred by a hard quark produced in a nuclear medium induce the emission of soft gluons which carry a fraction of the quark energy and eventually affect the hadronization process. Here, the depletion of semi-inclusive hadron spectra in DIS on various nuclei (N, Ne, Cu, Kr) is computed as a function of nu and z to leading order in alpha_s through medium-modified fragmentation functions. Using the transport coefficient q previously determined from Drell-Yan production, the predictions are found to be in good agreement with EMC and HERMES preliminary data. Calculations on Xe targets are also presented and discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figure

Systematic Study of High-pT Direct Photon Production with the PHENIX Experiment at RHIC

When studying the initial state and evolution of the matter created in relativistic heavy ion collisions, high-pT direct photons are a powerful probe. They are created in initial hard processes and in parton fragmentation, and possibly in interactions of partons with the hot and dense medium. We present systematic measurements of high-pT direct photon production in \sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV p+p and Au+Au collisions. The nuclear modification factor of direct photons is shown for 5 < pT < 18 GeV/c, and at very high transverse momenta it seems to be below unity in the most central Au+Au collisions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Invited parallel talk at The 19th International Conference On Ultra relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2006), Shanghai China, Nov. 14-20, 200

Photon tagged correlations in heavy ion collisions

A detailed study of various two-particle correlation functions involving photons and neutral pions is presented in proton-proton and lead-lead collisions at the LHC energy. The aim is to use these correlation functions to quantify the effect of the medium (in lead-lead collisions) on the jet decay properties. The calculations are carried out at the leading order in QCD but the next-to-leading order corrections are also discussed. The competition between different production mechanisms makes the connection between the jet energy loss spectrum and the gamma-pi correlations somewhat indirect while the gamma-gamma correlations have a clearer relation to the jet fragmentation properties.Comment: 32 pages, 19 figures. Minor changes, published versio

Prompt Photon Production in p-A Collisions at LHC and the Extraction of Gluon Shadowing

International audienceA report is given on the study of using prompt photon production at the LHC to probe the gluon nuclear density, and more specifically the shadowing ratio GA/Gp that one could access in foreseen p-A runs

Non-universality of transverse Coulomb exchange at small x

Within an explicit scalar QED model we compare, at fixed x << 1, the leading-twist K_T-dependent `quark' distribution f_q(x, K_T) probed in deep inelastic scattering and Drell-Yan production, and show that the model is consistent with the universality of f_q(x, K_T). The extension of the model from the aligned-jet to the 'symmetric' kinematical regime reveals interesting properties of the physics of Coulomb rescatterings when comparing DIS and DY processes. At small x the transverse momentum induced by multiple scattering on a single centre is process dependent, as well as the transverse momentum broadening occurring in collisions on a finite size nuclear target.Comment: 28 pages, 3 eps figure

High \pt{} particle correlations in pp collisions at LHC/ALICE

Two-particle correlation triggered by high-\pt{} particles allows us to study hard scattering phenomena when full jet reconstruction is challenging. An analysis of the first ALICE pp data where charged and neutral particles isolated or not are used as trigger particles is presented. The two-particle correlation between the trigger ($t$) and the associate ($a$) particles is studied as a function of the imbalance parameter \xe=-$\vec{p}_{T_{a}} \cdot \vec{p}_{T_{t}}/\mid \vec{p}_{T_{t}}\mid ^{2}$ and interpreted in terms of jet fragmentation function.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, QM2011 conference proceedings, will be published on Journal of Physics