Nuclear Particle Astrophysics (NPA) Seminar: Laura Brittany Havener, Columbia University, “Jet quenching in relativistic heavy ion collisions with the ATLAS detector”

Heavy ion collisions at high energies are used to study QCD at high temperatures. These high temperatures allow for the formation of a new state of matter called quark-gluon plasma (QGP) where the quarks and gluons inside of the nuclei are no longer confined. Jets are a useful probe of this medium since partons inside the jet are expected to lose energy in interactions with the strongly interacting matter, a phenomena called jet quenching. Many measurements of jet quenching have been performed at RHIC and the LHC but this talk will discuss recent jet measurements with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. These measurements focus on precision so more direct comparisons can be made to theoretical calculations and are studied differentially in jet kinematics to provide insight into the flavor dependence of jet quenching. Results will be shown in two different collision systems (Pb+Pb and Xe+Xe) which probe the density and path length dependence of energy loss.