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Brewer, Jasmine

Publications and source records attributed to Brewer, Jasmine.

10 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Predictions for the sPHENIX physics program

sPHENIX is a next-generation detector experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, designed for a broad set of jet and heavy-flavor probes of the Quark-Gluon Plasma created in heavy ion collisions. In anticipation of the commissioning and first data-taking of the detector in 2023, a RIKEN-BNL Research Center (RBRC) workshop was organized to collect theoretical input and identify compelling aspects of the physics program. Here this paper compiles theoretical predictions from the workshop participants for jet quenching, heavy flavor and quarkonia, cold QCD, and bulk physics measurements at sPHENIX.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Far-from-equilibrium slow modes and momentum anisotropy in expanding plasma

The momentum distribution of particle production in heavy-ion collisions encodes information about thermalization processes in the early-stage quark-gluon plasma. We use kinetic theory to study the far-from-equilibrium evolution of an expanding plasma with an anisotropic momentumspace distribution. We identify slow and fast degrees of freedom in the far-from-equilibrium plasma from the evolution of moments of this distribution. At late times, the slow modes correspond to hydrodynamic degrees of freedom and are naturally gapped from the fast modes by the inverse of the relaxation time, $τ$$^{–1}_{R}$. At early times, however, there are an infinite number of slow modes with a gap inversely proportional to time, τ –1 . From the evolution of the slow modes we generalize the paradigm of the far-from-equilibrium attractor to vector and tensor components of the energy momentum tensor, and even to higher moments of the distribution function that are not part of the hydrodynamic evolution. We predict that initial-state momentum anisotropy decays slowly in the far-from-equilibrium phase and may persist until the relaxation time.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Scaling and adiabaticity in a rapidly expanding gluon plasma

In this work we aim to gain qualitative insight on the far-from-equilibrium behavior of the gluon plasma produced in the early stages of a heavy-ion collision. It was recently discovered [1] that the distribution functions of quarks and gluons in QCD effective kinetic theory (EKT) exhibit self-similar “scaling” evolution with time-dependent scaling exponents long before those exponents reach their pre-hydrodynamic fixed-point values. In this work we shed light on the origin of this time-dependent scaling phenomenon in the small-angle approximation to the Boltzmann equation. We first solve the Boltzmann equation numerically and find that time-dependent scaling is a feature of this kinetic theory, and that it captures key qualitative features of the scaling of hard gluons in QCD EKT. We then proceed to study scaling analytically and semi-analytically in this equation. We find that an appropriate momentum rescaling allows the scaling distribution to be identified as the instantaneous ground state of the operator describing the evolution of the distribution function, and the approach to the scaling function is described by the decay of the excited states. That is to say, there is a frame in which the system evolves adiabatically. Furthermore, from the conditions for adiabaticity we can derive evolution equations for the time-dependent scaling exponents. In addition to the known free-streaming and BMSS fixed points, we identify a new “dilute” fixed point when the number density becomes small before hydrodynamization. Corrections to the fixed point exponents in the small-angle approximation agree quantitatively with those found previously in QCD EKT and arise from the evolution of the ratio between hard and soft scales.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Disentangling jet modification in jet simulations and in Z+jet data

The selection of jets in heavy-ion collisions based on their p T after jet quenching is known to bias towards jets that lost little energy in the quark-gluon plasma. In this work, we study and quantify the impact of this selection bias on jet substructure observables so as to isolate effects caused by the modification of the substructure of jets by quenching. We do so at first in a simplified Monte Carlo study in which it is possible to identify the same jet before and after quenching. We show explicitly that jets selected based on their quenched (i.e. observable) p T have substantially smaller fractional energy loss than those selected based on the p T that they would have had in the absence of any quenching. This selection bias has a large impact on jet structure and substructure observables. As an example, we consider the angular separation ΔR of the hardest splitting in each jet, and find that the ΔR distribution of the (biased) sample of jets selected based upon their quenched p T is almost unmodified by quenching. In contrast, quenching causes dramatic modifications to the ΔR distribution of a sample of jets selected based upon their unquenched p T , with a significant enhancement at larger ΔR coming from the soft particles originating from the wake of the jet in the quark-gluon plasma. The jets which contribute to this enhancement are those which have lost the most energy and which were, therefore, left out of the sample selected after quenching. In a more realistic study, we then show that the same qualitative effects can all be observed in Z+jet events. Selecting jets in such events based on either the jet p T or the Z-boson p T provides an experimentally accessible way to quantify the effects of selection biases in jet observables and separate them from the modification of jet substructure caused by quenching. Selecting Z+jet events based upon the jet p T yields a ΔR distribution that appears almost unmodified whereas selecting Z+jet events based upon the Z-boson p T reveals a significant modification to the ΔR-distribution caused by quenching, once again arising from the wakes of those jets that lose more energy.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Evolution of the mean jet shape and dijet asymmetry distribution of an ensemble of holographic jets in strongly coupled plasma

Some of the most important experimentally accessible probes of the quark- gluon plasma (QGP) produced in heavy ion collisions come from the analysis of how the shape and energy of sprays of energetic particles produced within a cone with a specified opening angle (jets) in a hard scattering are modified by their passage through the strongly coupled, liquid, QGP. We model an ensemble of back-to-back dijets for the purpose of gaining a qualitative understanding of how the shapes of the individual jets and the asymmetry in the energy of the pairs of jets in the ensemble are modified by their passage through an expanding cooling droplet of strongly coupled plasma, in the model in a holographic gauge theory that is dual to a 4+1-dimensional black-hole spacetime that is asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS). We build our model by constructing an ensemble of strings in the dual gravitational description of the gauge theory. We model QCD jets in vacuum using strings whose endpoints are moving “downward” into the gravitational bulk spacetime with some fixed small angle, an angle that represents the opening angle (ratio of jet mass to jet energy) that the QCD jet would have in vacuum. Such strings must be moving through the gravitational bulk at (close to) the speed of light; they must be (close to) null. This condition does not specify the energy distribution along the string, meaning that it does not specify the shape of the jet being modeled. We study the dynamics of strings that are initially not null and show that strings with a wide range of initial conditions rapidly accelerate and become null and, as they do, develop a similar distribution of their energy density. We use this distribution of the energy density along the string, choose an ensemble of strings whose opening angles and energies are distributed as in perturbative QCD, and show that we can then fix one of the two model parameters such that the mean jet shape for the jets in the ensemble that we have built matches that measured in proton-proton collisions reasonably well. This is a novel way for hybridizing relevant inputs from perturbative QCD and a strongly coupled holographic gauge theory in the service of modeling jets in QGP. We send our ensemble of strings through an expanding cooling droplet of strongly coupled plasma, choosing the second model parameter so as to get a reasonable value for $R$ $^{AA}_{jet}$, the suppression in the number of jets, and study how the mean jet shape and the dijet asymmetry are modified, comparing both to measurements from heavy ion collisions at the LHC.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

A RECONNECTION-DRIVEN MODEL OF THE HARD X-RAY LOOP-TOP SOURCE FROM FLARE 2004 FEBRUARY 26

A compact X-class flare on 2004 February 26 showed a concentrated source of hard X-rays at the tops of the flare’s loops. This was analyzed in previous work and interpreted as plasma heated and compressed by slow magnetosonic shocks (SMSs) generated during post-reconnection retraction of the flux. That work used analytic expressions from a thin flux tube (TFT) model, which neglected many potentially important factors such as thermal conduction and chromospheric evaporation. Here we use a numerical solution of the TFT equations to produce a more comprehensive and accurate model of the same flare, including those effects previously omitted. These simulations corroborate the prior hypothesis that slow-mode shocks persist well after the retraction has ended, thus producing a compact, loop-top source instead of an elongated jet, as steady reconnection models predict. Thermal conduction leads to densities higher than analytic estimates had predicted, and evaporation enhances the density still higher, but at lower temperatures. X-ray light curves and spectra are synthesized by convolving the results from a single TFT simulation with the rate at which flux is reconnected, as measured through motion of flare ribbons, for example. These agree well with light curves observed by RHESSI and GOES and spectra from RHESSI . An image created from a superposition of TFT model runs resembles one produced from RHESSI observations. This suggests that the HXR loop-top source, at least the one observed in this flare, could be the result of SMSs produced in fast reconnection models like Petschek’s.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗