Jet fragmentation in STAR going from p+p to Au+Au

Abstract

Jet fragmentation functions provide insight into jet structure and are expected to be modified by the nuclear medium in A+A collisions with respect to p+p reference measurements. If jet reconstruction is unbiased then a softening of the fragmentation functions is expected and should be observed in Au+Au collisions at RHIC. In these proceedings we present measurements of fragmentation functions in p+p for charged particles for different jet finding algorithms; these measurements are understood and therefore can be used as a reference for comparison with Au+Au results. We report the effect of background and its fluctuations on jet reconstruction in Au+Au collisions, estimated by using the jet algorithms on simulated Pythia jets embedded in real Au+Au events. Finally, measurements of fragmentation functions for jets reconstructed in Au+Au events and their comparison to the p+p baseline are presented and discussed.