Thesis

Antenna parton showers in an expanding QGP

• Call:

  PT-CERN Call 2022/2

• Academic Year:

  2022

• Domain:

  Astroparticle Physics

• Supervisor:

  José Guilherme Milhano

• Co-Supervisor:

  Liliana Apolinário

• Institution:

  Instituto Superior Técnico (Universidade de Lisboa)

• Host Institution:

  Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas

• Abstract:

  At very high energies or densities, quarks and gluons produce a new state of matter known as Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) which is observed in heavy-ion collisions at modern colliders. Once produced, the QGP expands and cools very rapidly converting into normal hadronic matter. The very short lifetime of the QGP, of around 30 yoctoseconds, requires that all probes used to study the dynamics of the QGP have to have been produced concurrently with it. Jets, the offspring of energetic quarks and gluons produced in the collision, are the most versatile probes to understand the inner workings of the QGP. For realistic comparisons with experimental data, analytical calculations are complemented by simulation codes. Parton showers, the simulation of jet development, in the presence of a QGP have been developed over the last couple of decades. At present, no available parton shower encodes the wealth of theoretical knowledge we have achieved over the last few years. In particular, both the known modifications of colour coherence effected by the QGP on the parton shower and an explicit coupling of the interaction of quarks and gluons with the dynamics of QGP expansion remain to be formulated in the probabilistic framework of a parton shower. This project is expected to attain the probabilistic formulation of both effects and their computational implementation, for later implementation within an existing Monte Carlo event generator. This project is expected to have a lasting impact in maximizing the potential of LHC data. The work will be carried out in LIP-Lisboa and at Lund University (Sweden) under the supervision of Guilherme Milhano and co-supervision of Liliana Apolinário (LIP) and Korinna Zapp (Lund).