Elucidating Jet Energy Loss in Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

Very soon the LHC will provide beams for heavy ion collisions at 5.52 TeV/nucleon. This center-of-mass energy results in a large cross-section for producing high-$E_T$ ($>$ 50 GeV) jets that are distinct from the soft, underlying event. This brings with it the possibility of performing full jet reconstruction to directly study jet energy loss in the medium produced in heavy ion collisions. In this note, we present the current state of jet reconstruction performance studies in heavy ion events using the ATLAS detector. We also discuss the possibilities of energy loss measurements available with full jet reconstruction: single jet $R_{AA}$ and di-jet and $\gamma$-jet correlations.