Charged jet reconstruction in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV at RHIC

Abstract

Jets represent an important tool to explore the properties of the hot and dense nuclear matter created in heavy-ion collisions. However, full jet reconstruction in such events is a challenging task due to extremely large and fluctuating background, which generates a large population of combinatorial jets that overwhelm the true hard jet population. In order to carry out accurate, data-driven jet measurements over a broad kinematic range in such conditions of small signal to background, we use several novel approaches in order to measure inclusive charged jet distributions and semi-inclusive charged jet distributions recoiling from a high pT hadron trigger in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV.