Jets in heavy ion collisions

High energetic particles traversing a dense medium lose a sizable part of their energy in form of gluon radiation. As a result, the rate of high-$p_t$ particles is expected to be suppressed in heavy ion collisions with respect to the proton case. Recent experimental data from RHIC strongly support this scenario. This allows to study the properties of the medium by the amount of jet quenching it produces. The angular dependence of the radiation is modified in the medium in a characteristic way. This provides another tool to study the medium properties in a more differential measurement.Comment: 4 pages, 3 postscript figures. Contributed to 38th Rencontres de Moriond on QCD and Hadronic Interactions, Les Arcs, France, 22-29 Mar 200

Medium Modification of the Jet Properties

In the case that a dense medium is created in a heavy ions collision, high-E_t jets are expected to be broadened by medium-modified gluon emission. This broadening is directly related, through geometry, to the energy loss measured in inclusive high-p_t particle suppression. We present here the modifications of jet observables due to the presence of a medium for the case of azimuthal jet energy distributions and k_t-differential multiplicities inside the jets.Comment: 4 pages, 3 postscript figures. Proceedings for Quark Matter 200

Gluon distributions in nuclei at small x: guidance from different models

Different approaches to gluon shadowing at small x are reviewed. Some available results relevant for RHIC and LHC are compared.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX2e, uses enclosed cernrep.cls, one eps figure enclosed using graphicx, contribution to the Yellow Report on Hard Probes in Heavy Ion Collisions at the LH

Baryon and Antibaryon production at RHIC energies in the Dual Parton Model

We compute the mid-rapidity densities of pions, kaons, baryons and antibaryons in $Au$--$Au$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 130 GeV in the Dual Parton Model supplemented with final state interactions, and we present a comparison with available data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Talk given at XXXVII Rencontres de Moriond, Les Arcs, France, March 200

Spectroscopy of blue horizontal branch stars in NGC 6656 (M22)

Recent investigations revealed very peculiar properties of blue horizontal branch (HB) stars in \omega Centauri, which show anomalously low surface gravity and mass compared to other clusters and to theoretical models. \omega Centauri, however, is a very unusual object, hosting a complex mix of multiple stellar populations with different metallicity and chemical abundances. We measured the fundamental parameters (temperature, gravity, and surface helium abundance) of a sample of 71 blue HB stars in M22, with the aim of clarifying if the peculiar results found in \omega Cen are unique to this cluster. M22 also hosts multiple sub-populations of stars with a spread in metallicity, analogous to \omega Cen. The stellar parameters were measured on low-resolution spectra fitting the Balmer and helium lines with a grid of synthetic spectra. From these parameters, the mass and reddening were estimated. Our results on the gravities and masses agree well with theoretical expectations, matching the previous measurements in three "normal" clusters. The anomalies found in \omega Cen are not observed among our stars. A mild mass underestimate is found for stars hotter than 14\,000 K, but an exact analogy with \omega Cen cannot be drawn. We measured the reddening in the direction of M22 with two independent methods, finding E(B-V)=0.35 \pm 0.02 mag, with semi-amplitude of the maximum variation \Delta(E(B-V))=0.06 mag, and an rms intrinsic dispersion of \sigma(E(B-V))=0.03 mag.Comment: 11 pages, 9 Postscript figure

Hyperon Enhancement in the Dual Parton Model

We review the two sources of hyperon enhancement in the dual parton model: strings originating from diquark-antidiquark pairs in the nucleon sea and net baryons containing two or three sea quarks with a yield controlled by the observed stopping. We show that adding final state interactions (including strangeness exchange reactions as well as the inverse reactions required by detailed balance) with a single averaged cross-section $\sigma=0.2$ mb, we can explain the observed hyperon enhancement in PbPb collisions at CERN SPS.Comment: 6 pages, 2 eps-figure

The scale dependent nuclear effects in parton distributions for practical applications

The scale dependence of the ratios of parton distributions in a proton of a nucleus $A$ and in the free proton, $R_i^A(x,Q^2)=f_{i/A}(x,Q^2)/f_i(x,Q^2)$, is studied within the framework of the lowest order leading-twist DGLAP evolution. By evolving the initial nuclear distributions obtained with the GRV-LO and CTEQ4L sets at a scale $Q_0^2$, we show that the ratios $R_i^A(x,Q^2)$ are only moderately sensitive to the choice of a specific modern set of free parton distributions. We propose that to a good first approximation, this parton distribution set-dependence of the nuclear ratios $R_i^A(x,Q^2)$ can be neglected in practical applications. With this result, we offer a numerical parametrization of $R_i^A(x,Q^2)$ for all parton flavours $i$ in any $A>2$, and at any $10^{-6}\le x \le 1$ and any $Q^2\ge 2.25$ GeV$^2$ for computing cross sections of hard processes in nuclear collisions.Comment: 14 pages, including 4 eps-figure