Probing jet medium interaction with generalized projected energy correlators

Abstract

We study medium modifications to generalized projected energy correlators, referred to as $ν$-correlators, measured on jets in heavy-ion collisions. While the vacuum distributions of these correlators exhibit a characteristic $1/ν$ enhancement, we show that in a dense medium this behavior is regulated within both the BDMPS-Z and semi-classical approximations as $ν\to 0$. As a result, contributions from medium-induced emissions become parametrically suppressed relative to the vacuum baseline. We observe a similar trend in the simulated events generated with JEWEL. We find that while the large angle enhancement is qualitatively similar across different values of $ν$, the small angle distribution changes drastically between $ν<1$ and $ν>1$. This indicates that small angle modifications, primarily driven by jet energy loss, are imprinted differently across $ν$-correlators. In particular, for $ν<1$ the small angle enhancement is less prominent which suggests that these correlators may provide improved sensitivity to medium modifications in the large angle region.