Electroweak Bosons in Heavy Ion Collisions

by Ms. Mirta Dumancic

Weizmann Institute Of Science

at Particles and Fields Seminar

Mon, 13 May 2019, 14:00
Sacta-Rashi Building for Physics (54), room 207

Abstract

Electroweak bosons produced in collisions of heavy ions carry essential information that sheds light on to variety of open topics in quantum chromodynamics. By measuring yields and distributions of the massive electroweak (EW) bosons and the isolated prompt photons, we can assess the parton distribution functions in specific kinematic regions and test their modifications in the nuclear environment compared to the ones of the free nucleon. In addition, the number of produced EW bosons offers a great opportunity to test our understanding of the initial collision geometry in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. These probes can also serve as a standard candle for the calibrated measure of the jet energy loss in the strongly coupled quark gluon plasma created in collisions of heavy ions. In the recent years the ATLAS experiment at the LHC has collected a high-statistics data sample in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the center-of-mass energies of 5.02 and 8.16 TeV. This allows for a detailed study of the above-mentioned topics and comparisons of results with various theoretical models. This talk will cover the most recent results and future perspectives of these measurements.

Created on 12-05-2019 by Citron, Zvi (zhcitron)
Updaded on 12-05-2019 by Citron, Zvi (zhcitron)