High-pT Physics in the Heavy Ion Era Cambridge Monographs on Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics and Cosmology Series

Aimed at graduate students and researchers in the field of high-energy nuclear physics, this book provides an overview of the basic concepts of large transverse momentum particle physics, with a focus on pQCD phenomena. It examines high-pT probes of relativistic heavy-ion collisions and will serve as a handbook for those working on RHIC and LHC data analyses. Starting with an introduction and review of the field, the authors look at basic observables and experimental techniques, concentrating on relativistic particle kinematics, before moving onto a discussion about the origins of high-pT physics. The main features of high-pT physics are placed within a historical context and the authors adopt an experimental outlook, highlighting the most important discoveries leading up to the foundation of modern QCD theory. Advanced methods are described in detail, making this book especially useful for newcomers to the field.

1. Introduction and overview; 2. Basic observables; 3. Some experimental techniques; 4. The search for structure; 5. Origins of high pT physics – the search for the W boson; 6. Discovery of hard scattering in p–p collisions; 7. Direct single lepton production and the discovery of charm; 8. J/ ψ, u and Drell–Yan pair production; 9. Two particle correlations; 10. Direct photon production; 11. The search for jets; 12. QCD in hard scattering; 13. Heavy ion physics in the high pT era; 14. RHIC and LHC; Appendix A. Probability and statistics; Appendix B. Methods of Monte Carlo calculations; Appendix C. TAB and the Glauber Monte Carlo calculation; Appendix D. Fits including systematic errors; Appendix E. The shape of the xE distribution triggered by a jet fragment, for example, π0; Appendix F. kT phenomenology and Gaussian smearing; References; Index.

Jan Rak is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Physics at Jyväskylä University, Finland. He is also project leader of ALICE/CERN for Finland and was involved in the CERES/SPS experiment at CERN, Switzerland and the PHENIX experiment at the RHIC, USA.
Michael J. Tannenbaum is a Senior Scientist within the Physics Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory. His achievements include measurement of the statistics of the muon, and discoveries in hard-scattering of quarks and gluons at the CERN-ISR which he applied to the discovery of jet-quenching in collisions of nuclei at the RHIC, USA.