Observation of the Jet Diffusion Wake Using Dijets in Heavy-Ion Collisions


Hayrapetyan A., Makarenko V., Tumasyan A., Adam W., Benato L., Bergauer T., ...More

Physical review letters, vol.137, no.7, pp.71902, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 137 Issue: 7
  • Publication Date: 2026
  • Doi Number: 10.1103/g49y-8cjl
  • Journal Name: Physical review letters
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Chemical Abstracts Core, Compendex, EMBASE, INSPEC, MathSciNet, MEDLINE, zbMATH, DIALNET
  • Page Numbers: pp.71902
  • Yıldız Technical University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Energetic quarks and gluons traversing a hot and dense quark-gluon plasma deposit energy and momentum into the medium before hadronizing to collimated sprays of particles, known as jets. This energy-momentum deposition is expected to produce medium responses, collectively known as jet wakes, with "diffusion wake" denoting a depletion of particles in the direction opposite to the propagating jet. The diffusion wake is studied by comparing dijet-hadron correlations measured in lead-lead (PbPb) and proton-proton (pp) collisions. The analysis uses PbPb and pp data recorded at a nucleon-nucleon (NN) center-of-mass energy sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.02 TeV with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC. By exploring how the dijet-hadron correlation distributions differ for various pseudorapidity separations of the two jets in the dijet, the presence of a jet diffusion wake is firmly established. The diffusion wake signal has a significance greater than 5 standard deviations for charged particles in the transverse momentum range 1