Jet Photoproduction in Peripheral Heavy-Ion Collisions

Abstract

In peripheral relativistic heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, jet+jet and photon+jet final states can be produced when a photon from the virtual photon field surrounding the nucleus interacts with a parton in the opposite nucleus (direct production). The virtual photon may also fluctuate into states with multiple gluons and q-qbar pairs (resolved production), opening more channels for jet photoproduction. We compare the rates for direct and resolved jet+jet and photon+jet production to explore the sensitivity to the nuclear and photon parton distribution functions. We calculate the transverse momentum distributions of both partonic jets and leading hadrons produced by jet fragmentation.