A jet is a narrow cone of hadrons and other particles produced by the hadronization of quarks and gluons in a particle physics or heavy ion experiment. Particles carrying a color charge, i.e. quarks and gluons, cannot exist in free form because of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) confinement which only allows for colorless states. When protons collide at high energies, their color charged components each carry away some of the color charge. In accordance with confinement, these fragments create other colored objects around them to form colorless hadrons. The ensemble of these objects is called a jet, since the fragments all tend to travel in the same direction, forming a narrow "jet" of particles. Jets are measured in particle detectors and studied in order to determine the properties of the original quarks. A jet definition includes a jet algorithm and a recombination scheme. The former defines how some inputs, e.g. particles or detector objects, are grouped into jets, while the latter specifies how a momentum is assigned to a jet. For example, jets can be characterized by the thrust. The jet direction (jet axis) can be defined as the thrust axis. In particle physics experiments, jets are usually built from clusters of energy depositions in the detector calorimeter. When studying simulated processes, the calorimeter jets can be reconstructed based on a simulated detector response. However, in simulated samples, jets can also be reconstructed directly from stable particles emerging from fragmentation processes. Particle-level jets are often referred to as truth-jets. A good jet algorithm usually allows for obtaining similar sets of jets at different levels in the event evolution. Typical jet reconstruction algorithms are, e.g., the anti-kT algorithm, kT algorithm, cone algorithm. A typical recombination scheme is the E-scheme, or 4-vector scheme, in which the 4-vector of a jet is defined as the sum of 4-vectors of all its constituents. In relativistic heavy ion physics, jets are important because the originating hard scattering is a natural probe for the QCD matter created in the collision, and indicate its phase. When the QCD matter undergoes a phase crossover into quark gluon plasma, the energy loss in the medium grows significantly, effectively quenching (reducing the intensity of) the outgoing jet. Example of jet analysis techniques are:
jet correlation flavor tagging (e.g., b-tagging) jet substructure. The Lund string model is an example of a jet fragmentation model.
Jet production Jets are produced in QCD hard scattering processes, creating high transverse momentum quarks or gluons, or collectively called partons in the partonic picture. The probability of creating a certain set of jets is described by the jet production cross section, which is an average of elementary perturbative QCD quark, antiquark, and gluon processes, weighted by the parton distribution functions. For the most frequent jet pair production process, the two particle scattering, the jet production cross section in a hadronic collision is given by
σ i j → k = ∑ i , j ∫ d x 1 d x 2 d t ^ f i 1 ( x 1 , Q 2 ) f j 2 ( x 2 , Q 2 ) d σ ^ i j → k d t ^ , {\displaystyle \sigma _{ij\rightarrow k}=\sum _{i,j}\int dx_{1}dx_{2}d{\hat {t}}f_{i}^{1}(x_{1},Q^{2})f_{j}^{2}(x_{2},Q^{2}){\frac {d{\hat {\sigma }}_{ij\rightarrow k}}{d{\hat {t}}}},}
with
x, Q2: longitudinal momentum fraction and momentum transfer
σ ^ i j → k {\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }}_{ij\rightarrow k}} : perturbative QCD cross section for the reaction ij → k
f i a ( x , Q 2 ) {\displaystyle f_{i}^{a}(x,Q^{2})} : parton distribution function for finding particle species i in beam a. Elementary cross sections σ ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }}} are e.g. calculated to the leading order of perturbation theory in Peskin & Schroeder (1995), section 17.4. A review of various parameterizations of parton distribution functions and the calculation in the context of Monte Carlo event generators is discussed in T. Sjöstrand et al. (2003), section 7.4.1.
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