MC Study of the Impact of Jet Quenching on Energy Correlators in Heavy Ion Collisions (A JEWEL-based Analysis on ENCs for N = 2 and 3)

Abstract

In the framework of QCD, energy correlators (ENCs) in jets offer a sensitive probe of the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) formed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We employ the JEWEL Monte Carlo generator to study QGP-induced modifications to ENCs measured on jets reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm. We analyze both N = 2 and N = 3 correlators to characterize the medium effects on the reconstructed jet. For N = 2, our simulations reveal pronounced enhancements at both large and small angles, in agreement with CMS data. The small-angle enhancement is attributed to the flavor dependence of the initiating parton combined with jet pT selection biases induced by energy loss. For N = 3, we observe almost all the features of the N = 2 case and find that the E3C distribution with respect to RS is far more sensitive to medium enhancement compared to RL. It is noteworthy that the E3C(ϕ) distribution remains largely unaltered at LHC energies, suggesting that its ϕ profile—predominantly set by the first parton splitting—is robust against QGP effects; however, further simulations indicate that medium modifications become observable at RHIC energies. Additionally, we introduce a new (X, Y) coordinate system to map recoil-induced modifications, showing that the enhancement is concentrated along the isosceles region of the particle-triplet triangle, in contrast to the more equilateral pattern expected from the wake effect.