Towards a Nonperturbative Formulation of the Jet Charge.

The jet charge is an old observable that has proven uniquely useful for discrimination of jets initiated by different flavors of light quarks, for example. In this Letter, we propose an approach to understanding the jet charge by establishing simple, robust assumptions that hold to good approximation nonperturbatively, such as isospin conservation and large particle multiplicity in the jets, forgoing any attempt at a perturbative analysis. From these assumptions, the jet charge distribution with fixed particle multiplicity takes the form of a Gaussian by the central limit theorem and whose mean and variance are related to fractional-power moments of single particle energy distributions. These results make several concrete predictions for the scaling of the jet charge with the multiplicity, explaining many of the results already in the literature, and new results we validate in Monte Carlo simulation.

Nuclear Modification of Transverse Momentum Dependent Parton Distribution Functions by a Global QCD Analysis.

We perform the first simultaneous global QCD extraction of the transverse momentum dependent (TMD) parton distribution functions and the TMD fragmentation functions in nuclei. We have considered the world set of data from semi-inclusive electron-nucleus deep inelastic scattering and Drell-Yan dilepton production. In total, this data set consists of 90 data points from HERMES, Fermilab, RHIC, and LHC. Working at next-to-leading order and next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, we achieve a χ^{2}/d.o.f.=1.196. In this analysis, we perform the first extraction of nuclear modified TMDs and compare these to those in free nucleons. We also make predictions for the ongoing JLab 12 GeV program and future electron-ion collider measurements.

Jet Charge: A Flavor Prism for Spin Asymmetries at the Electron-Ion Collider.

We propose the jet charge observable as a novel probe of flavor structure in the nucleon spin program at the electron ion collider (EIC) and develop the underlying framework from first principles. We show that jet charge measurements can substantially enhance the sensitivity of spin asymmetries to different partonic flavors in the nucleon. This sensitivity can be further improved by constructing the jet charge using only a subset of hadron species (pions or kaons) in the jet. As an example, we use the Sivers asymmetry in back-to-back electron-jet production at the EIC to show that the jet charge can be a unique tool in constraining the Sivers function for different partonic flavors.

J/ψ Production and Polarization within a Jet.

We study the production and polarization of J/ψ mesons within a jet in proton-proton collisions at the LHC. We define the J/ψ-jet fragmentation function as a ratio of differential jet cross sections with and without the reconstructed J/ψ in the jet. We demonstrate that this is a very useful observable to help explore the J/ψ production mechanism, and to differentiate between different nonrelativistic QCD global fits based on inclusive J/ψ cross sections. Furthermore, we propose to measure the polarization of J/ψ mesons inside the jet, which can provide even more stringent constraints for the heavy quarkonium production mechanism.

Jet quenching phenomenology from soft-collinear effective theory with Glauber gluons.

We present the first application of a recently developed effective theory of jet propagation in matter, soft-collinear effective theory with Glauber gluons (SCET_{G}), to inclusive hadron suppression in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC and the LHC. SCET_{G}-based splitting kernels allow us to go beyond the traditional energy loss approximation and unify the treatment of vacuum and medium-induced parton showers. In the soft gluon emission limit, we establish a simple analytic relation between the QCD evolution and energy loss approaches to jet quenching. We quantify the uncertainties associated with the implementation of the in-medim modification of hadron production cross sections and show that the coupling between the jet and the medium can be constrained with better than 10% accuracy.

Next-to-leading-order forward hadron production in the small-x regime: the role of rapidity factorization.

Single inclusive hadron production at forward rapidity in high energy p+A collisions is an important probe of the high gluon density regime of QCD and the associated small-x formalism. We revisit an earlier one-loop calculation to illustrate the significance of the "rapidity factorization" approach in this regime. Such factorization separates the very small-x unintegrated gluon density evolution and leads to a new correction term to the physical cross section at one-loop level. Importantly, this rapidity factorization formalism remedies the previous unphysical negative next-to-leading-order contribution to the cross section. It is much more stable with respect to "rapidity" variation when compared to the leading-order calculation and provides improved agreement between theory and experiment in the forward rapidity region.

Next-to-leading order QCD factorization for semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering at twist 4.

Within the framework of a high-twist approach, we calculate the next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD corrections to the transverse momentum broadening in semi-inclusive hadron production in deeply inelastic e+A collisions, as well as lepton pair production in p+A collisions. With explicit calculations of both real and virtual contributions, we verify, for the first time, the factorization theorem at twist 4 in NLO for the nuclear-enhanced transverse momentum weighted differential cross section and demonstrate the universality of the associated twist-4 quark-gluon correlation function. We also identify the QCD evolution equation for the twist-4 quark-gluon correlation function in a large nucleus, which can be solved to determine the scale dependence of the jet transport parameter in the study of jet quenching.

Indication on the process dependence of the Sivers effect.

We analyze the spin asymmetry for single inclusive jet production in proton-proton collisions collected by the AnDY experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Sivers asymmetry data from semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering experiments. In particular, we consider the role color gauge invariance plays in determining the process dependence of the Sivers effect. We find that after carefully taking into account the initial-state and final-state interactions between the active parton and the remnant of the polarized hadron, the calculated jet spin asymmetry based on the Sivers functions extracted from HERMES and COMPASS experiments is consistent with the AnDY experimental data. This provides a first indication for the process dependence of the Sivers effect in these processes. We also make predictions for both direct photon and Drell-Yan spin asymmetry, to further test the process dependence of the Sivers effect in future experiments.

Heavy quarkonium production and polarization.

We present a perturbative QCD factorization formalism for the production of heavy quarkonia of large transverse momentum p(T) at collider energies, which includes both the leading-power (LP) and next-to-leading-power (NLP) contributions to the cross section in the m(Q)(2)/p(T)(2) expansion for heavy quark mass m(Q). We estimate fragmentation functions in the nonrelativistic QCD formalism and reproduce the bulk of the large enhancement found in explicit next-to-leading-order calculations in the color-singlet model. Heavy quarkonia produced from NLP channels prefer longitudinal polarization.

Quark fragmentation in the θ vacuum.

QCD vacuum is a superposition of degenerate states with different topological numbers that are connected by tunneling (the θ vacuum). The tunneling events are due to configurations of gauge fields (e.g., the instantons) that induce local P-odd domains in Minkowski space-time. We study the quark fragmentation in this topologically nontrivial QCD background. We find that even though QCD globally conserves P and CP symmetries, two new kinds of P-odd fragmentation functions emerge. We study their experimental manifestations in dihadron production in e(+)e(-) collisions, and find two interesting dihadron correlations: the cos(ϕ(1)+ϕ(2)) correlation usually referred to as the Collins effect, and a P-odd ∼sin(ϕ(10+ϕ(2)) correlation that vanishes in the cross section summed over many events, but survives on the event-by-event basis.

QCD resummation for single spin asymmetries.

We study the transverse momentum dependent factorization for single spin asymmetries in Drell-Yan and semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering processes at one-loop order. The next-to-leading order hard factors are calculated in the Ji-Ma-Yuan factorization scheme. We further derive the QCD resummation formalisms for these observables following the Collins-Soper-Sterman method. The results are expressed in terms of the collinear correlation functions from initial and/or final state hadrons coupled with the Sudakov form factor containing all order soft-gluon resummation effects. The scheme-independent coefficients are calculated up to one-loop order.

Test of the universality of naive-time-reversal-odd fragmentation functions.

We investigate the "spontaneous" hyperon transverse polarization in e+ e- annihilation and semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering processes as a test of the universality of the naive-time-reversal-odd transverse momentum dependent fragmentation functions. We find that universality implies definite sign relations among various observables. This provides a unique opportunity to study initial or final state interaction effects in the fragmentation process and test the associated factorization.

Testing the time-reversal modified universality of the Sivers function.

We derive the time-reversal modified universality for both quark and gluon Sivers functions from the parity and time-reversal invariance of QCD. We calculate the single transverse-spin asymmetry of inclusive lepton from the decay of W bosons in polarized proton-proton collision at the Brookhaven National Laboratory Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), in terms of the Sivers function. We find that, although the asymmetry is diluted from the W decay, the lepton asymmetry is at the level of several percent and is measurable for a good range of lepton rapidity at RHIC. We argue that this measurable lepton asymmetry at RHIC is an excellent observable for testing the time-reversal modified universality of the Sivers function.