Title: Jet physics with heavy ions at the LHC

Speaker: Ivan Vitev (LANL)

Abstract: In the past several decades, advances in the theory of strong interactions can be traced through theoretical and experimental developments in understanding the physics of jets in high-energy collider experiments. Jets have been instrumental in establishing Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and the parton model. Jet physics is the frontier where nuclear and particle physics intersect. In this talk, I will describe the theory that underlays jet production in ultra-relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  I will show how insightful choices of experimental observables can help elucidate the differences between vacuum and in-medium parton showers and pinpoint the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced in heavy ion reactions. Toward the end of the talk I will discuss a new effective theory of jet propagation in matter that is being developed with the goal of improving heavy ion phenomenology.