Lepton-Jet Correlations in Deep Inelastic Scattering at the Electron-Ion Collider

The time-reversal odd side of a jet

We re-examine the jet probes of the nucleon spin and flavor structures. We find for the first time that the time-reversal odd (T-odd) component of a jet, conventionally thought to vanish, can survive due to the non-perturbative fragmentation and hadronization effects. This additional contribution of a jet will lead to novel jet phenomena relevant for unlocking the access to several spin structures of the nucleon, which were thought to be impossible by using jets. As examples, we show how the T-odd constituent can couple to the proton transversity at the Electron Ion Collider (EIC) and can give rise to the anisotropy in the jet production ine + e - annihilations. We expect the T-odd contribution of the jet to have broad applications in high energy nuclear physics.

Harmonics of Parton Saturation in Lepton-Jet Correlations at the Electron-Ion Collider

Parton saturation is one of the most intriguing phenomena in the high energy nuclear physics research frontier, especially in the upcoming era of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). The lepton-jet correlation in deep inelastic scattering provides us with a new gateway to the parton saturation at the EIC. In particular, we demonstrate that azimuthal angle anisotropies of the lepton-jet correlation are sensitive to the strength of the saturation momentum in the EIC kinematic region. In contrast to the predictions based on the collinear framework calculation, significant nuclear modification of the anisotropies is observed when we compare the saturation physics results in e+p and e+Au scatterings. By measuring these harmonic coefficients at the EIC, one can conduct quantitative analyses in different collisional systems and unveil compelling evidence for saturation effects.

Nucleon Energy Correlators

We introduce the concept of the nucleon energy correlators, a set of novel objects that encode the microscopic details of a nucleon, such as the parton angular distribution in a nucleon, the collinear splitting to all orders, as well as the internal transverse dynamics of the nucleon. The nucleon energy correlators complement the conventional nucleon or nucleus tomography, but without introducing the nonperturbative fragmentation functions or the jet clustering algorithms. We demonstrate how the nucleon energy correlators can be measured in the lepton-nucleon deep inelastic scattering. The predicted distributions display a fascinating phase transition between the perturbative and nonperturbative regime. In the perturbative phase, a polar angle version of the Bjorken scaling behavior is predicted. We discuss its possible applications and expect it to aggrandize the physics content at the electron ion colliders with a far-forward detector.

Measurement of Lepton-Jet Correlation in Deep-Inelastic Scattering with the H1 Detector Using Machine Learning for Unfolding

The first measurement of lepton-jet momentum imbalance and azimuthal correlation in lepton-proton scattering at high momentum transfer is presented. These data, taken with the H1 detector at HERA, are corrected for detector effects using an unbinned machine learning algorithm (multifold), which considers eight observables simultaneously in this first application. The unfolded cross sections are compared with calculations performed within the context of collinear or transverse-momentum-dependent factorization in quantum chromodynamics as well as Monte Carlo event generators.

Transverse-momentum resummation for boson plus jet production at hadron colliders

We consider the associated production of a vector or Higgs boson with a jet in hadronic collisions. When the transverse momentum q T of the boson-jet system is much smaller than its invariant mass Q, the QCD perturbative expansion is affected by large logarithmic terms that must be resummed to all orders. We discuss the all-order resummation structure of the logarithmically enhanced contributions up to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. Resummation is performed at the differential level with respect to the kinematical variables of the boson-jet system. Soft-parton radiation produces azimuthal correlations that are fully accounted for in our framework. We present explicit analytical results for the resummation coefficients up to next-to-leading order and next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, that include the exact dependence on the jet radius.

Nuclear Matter Effects on Jet Production at Electron-Ion Colliders

Jet production and jet substructure in reactions with nuclei at future electron-ion colliders will play a preeminent role in the exploration of nuclear structure and the evolution of parton showers in strongly interacting matter. In the framework of soft-collinear effective theory, generalized to include in-medium interactions, we present the first theoretical study of inclusive jet cross sections and the jet charge at the electron-ion collider. Predictions for the modification of these observables in electron-gold relative to electron-proton collisions reveal how the flexible center-of-mass energies and kinematic coverage at this new facility can be used to enhance the signal and maximize the impact of the electron-nucleus program. Importantly, we demonstrate theoretically how to disentangle the effects from nuclear parton distribution functions and the ones that arise from strong final-state interactions between the jet and the nuclear medium.

Anisotropy in Dijet Production in Exclusive and Inclusive Processes

We investigate the effect of soft gluon radiations on the azimuthal angle correlation between the total and relative momenta of two jets in inclusive and exclusive dijet processes. We show that the final state effect induces a sizable cos(2ϕ) anisotropy due to gluon emissions near the jet cones. The phenomenological consequences of this observation are discussed for various collider experiments, including diffractive processes in ultraperipheral pA and AA collisions, inclusive and diffractive dijet production at the EIC, and inclusive dijet in pp and AA collisions at the LHC.

Jet Charge: A Flavor Prism for Spin Asymmetries at the Electron-Ion Collider

We propose the jet charge observable as a novel probe of flavor structure in the nucleon spin program at the electron ion collider (EIC) and develop the underlying framework from first principles. We show that jet charge measurements can substantially enhance the sensitivity of spin asymmetries to different partonic flavors in the nucleon. This sensitivity can be further improved by constructing the jet charge using only a subset of hadron species (pions or kaons) in the jet. As an example, we use the Sivers asymmetry in back-to-back electron-jet production at the EIC to show that the jet charge can be a unique tool in constraining the Sivers function for different partonic flavors.