Emergence of Thermal Recoil Jets in High-Energy Heavy-Ion Collisions
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 102301 – Published 4 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/9x1t-b84m
Abstract
In the established paradigm of jet quenching in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, jets from initial hard parton scatterings are suppressed due to their interaction with the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), serving as crucial tomographic probes of QGP properties. Within the linear Boltzmann transport model, we find that the QGP is also capable of absorbing and reprocessing energy deposited by the hard jets into emergent jetlike objects, providing an alternative production mechanism of thermal recoil jets. These emergent thermal recoil jets exhibit distinct transverse momentum () and jet-cone size () dependencies different from the hard jets, and interpret the puzzling observation of the enhanced yields of hadron triggered jets at large azimuthal angles relative to the away side and solely at small and large . These thermal recoil jets are predicted to have unique substructures, such as a jet shape that increases with radius and a thermal-like distribution of their constituents, which await verification in future experimental analyses.
