We discuss the latest results from jet fragmentation and jet substructure measurements performed with the ALICE experiment in proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions in a wide range of jet transverse momentum. The jet production cross sections and cross section ratios for different jet resolution parameters will be shown in a wide range of $p_{textrm{T}}$. Results will be compared to next-to-leading order pQCD calculations.
The striking suppression and modification patterns that are observed in jet observables measured in heavy-ion collisions with respect to the proton-proton baseline have the potential to constrain the spatio-temporal branching process of energetic partons in a dense QCD medium. The mechanism of jet energy loss is intricately associated with medium resolution of jet substructure fluctuations. This naturally affects the behavior of the suppression of jets at high-pT, inducing an explicit dependence on jet scales. In this contribution, we review recent work on using the insight from multi-parton quenching to calculate leading-logarithmic corrections to the single-inclusive jet spectrum, and discuss its impact on a wide range of observables, including jet substructure.
We introduce soft drop isolation, a new photon isolation criterion inspired by jet substructure techniques. Soft drop isolation is collinear safe and is equivalent to Frixione isolation at leading non-trivial order in the small R limit. However, soft drop isolation has the interesting feature of being democratic, meaning that photons can be treated equivalently to hadrons for initial jet clustering. Taking advantage of this democratic property, we define an isolated photon subjet: a photon that is not isolated from its parent jet but is isolated within its parent subjet after soft drop declustering. The kinematics of this isolated photon subjet can be used to expose the QED splitting function, in which a quark radiates a photon, and we verify this behavior using both a parton shower generator and a perturbative calculation in the collinear limit.
A number of recent applications of jet substructure, in particular searches for light new particles, require substructure observables that are decorrelated with the jet mass. In this paper we introduce the Convolved SubStructure (CSS) approach, which uses a theoretical understanding of the observable to decorrelate the complete shape of its distribution. This decorrelation is performed by convolution with a shape function whose parameters and mass dependence are derived analytically. We consider in detail the case of the $D_2$ observable and perform an illustrative case study using a search for a light hadronically decaying $Z$. We find that the CSS approach completely decorrelates the $D_2$ observable over a wide range of masses. Our approach highlights the importance of improving the theoretical understanding of jet substructure observables to exploit increasingly subtle features for performance.
We develop the theoretical framework needed to study the distribution of hadrons with general polarization inside jets, with and without transverse momentum measured with respect to the standard jet axis. The key development in this paper, referred to as polarized jet fragmentation functions, opens up new opportunities to study both collinear and transverse momentum dependent (TMD) fragmentation functions. As two examples of the developed framework, we study longitudinally polarized collinear $Lambda$ and transversely polarized TMD $Lambda$ production inside jets in both $pp$ and $ep$ collisions. We find that both observables have high potential in constraining spin-dependent fragmentation functions with sizeable asymmetries predicted, in particular, at the future Electron-Ion Collider.
This report of the BOOST2012 workshop presents the results of four working groups that studied key aspects of jet substructure. We discuss the potential of the description of jet substructure in first-principle QCD calculations and study the accuracy of state-of-the-art Monte Carlo tools. Experimental limitations of the ability to resolve substructure are evaluated, with a focus on the impact of additional proton proton collisions on jet substructure performance in future LHC operating scenarios. A final section summarizes the lessons learnt during the deployment of substructure analyses in searches for new physics in the production of boosted top quarks.