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Flavor dependence of energy-energy correlators

Liliana Apolinário1,2, Raghav Kunnawalkam Elayavalli3, Nuno Olavo Madureira1,2, Jun-Xing Sheng3, Xin-Nian Wang4, and Zhong Yang3,4

  • 1LIP, Av. Prof. Gama Pinto, 2, P-1649-003 Lisboa, Portugal
  • 2Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, P-1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
  • 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
  • 4Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (MOE) and Institute of Particle Physics, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 054018 – Published 11 September, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/4sfq-315y

Abstract

Energy-energy correlators (EECs) within high energy jets serve as a key experimentally accessible quantity to probe the scale and structure of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The CMS Collaboration’s first measurement of the modification to the EEC within single inclusive jets in Pb+Pb collisions relative to p+p collisions reveals a significant enhancement at small angles, which may arise from jet transverse momentum pT selection biases due to jet energy loss. We investigate the dependence of jet EECs on the flavor of the initiating parton. The EEC distribution of a gluon jet is broader and the peak of transition from the perturbative to the nonperturbative regime occurs at a larger angle than that of a quark jet. Such flavor dependence leads to the different EECs for γ-jets and single inclusive jets due to their different flavor composition. It is also responsible for a colliding energy dependence of EECs of single inclusive jets at fixed jet energy. We also investigate the impact of flavor composition variation on the pT dependence of the jet EEC. We further propose that a change in the gluon jet fraction in A+A collisions compared to p+p can also contribute to a non-negligible enhancement of the medium modified EEC at small angles. Using the jewel model, we predict the reduction of the gluon jet fraction in A+A collisions and estimate its impact on the EEC.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 054018– Published 11 September, 2025
  • Received 11 March 2025
  • Accepted 15 August 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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