Paper detail

Quenching of inclusive and tagged b-jets at the LHC

We present theoretical predictions for the nuclear-induced attenuation of the differential cross sections for inclusive and tagged b-jet production in heavy ion collisions at the LHC. We find that for inclusive b-jet production at high transverse momentum the mass effects are negligible, and that the attenuation is comparable to the one observed for light jets. On the other hand, for isolated-photon and B-meson-tagged b-jets the sample of events with heavy quarks produced at the early stages of the collision is greatly enhanced. Thus, these tagged b-jet final-states have a much more direct connection to the physics of b-quark energy loss. We present theoretical predictions for the quenching of such tagged b-jet events at the LHC and the QGP-induced modification of the related momentum imbalance and asymmetry. We demonstrate that these tagged processes can be used to accurately study the physics of heavy quark production and propagation in dense QCD matter.