English

Where Feynman, Field and Fox failed and how we fixed it at RHIC

Nuclear Experiment 2008-06-04 v2

Abstract

Hard-scattering of point-like constituents (or partons) in p-p collisions was discovered at the CERN-ISR in 1972 by measurements utilizing inclusive single or pairs of hadrons with large transverse momentum (pTp_T). It was generally assumed following a seminal paper by Feynman, Field and Fox (FFF) (and much discussed in a talk that I gave at the 1979 Rencontres de Moriond) that ``everything you wanted to know about hard-scattering and jets'' could be measured by these methods. Recently, we found in PHENIX that the pTap_{T_a} distribution of away side hadrons from a single particle trigger [with pTtp_{T_t}] which is a leading fragment of the trigger jet, could not be used to measure the fragmentation function of the away jet as originally claimed by FFF. A new formula was derived which both exhibits scaling in the variable xEpTa/pTtx_E\sim p_{T_a}/p_{T_t} (a hot topic in 1979) and relates xEx_E, \sim the ratio of the transverse momenta of the measured particles, to x^h=p^Ta/p^Tt\hat{x}_h=\hat{p}_{T_a}/\hat{p}_{T_t}, the ratio of the transverse momenta of the away-side to trigger-side jets. Tests of the validity of the formula and applications to Au+Au central collisions at RHIC (where jets can not be reconstructed) are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0806.0040,
  title  = {Where Feynman, Field and Fox failed and how we fixed it at RHIC},
  author = {M. J. Tannenbaum},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.0040},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of XLIII Rencontres de Moriond, QCD and High Energy Interactions, La Thuile, Italy, Mar 8-15, 2008. v2 corrects title misspelling in listing

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:46:03.160Z