Speaker
Description
Jet production in high-energy collisions at RHIC provides direct access to the spin and flavor structure of the nucleon, as well as to the mechanisms of spin-dependent fragmentation and hadronization. This talk will present recent STAR results on jet production in proton-proton collisions, with emphasis on cold QCD and spin physics. The topics to be discussed include jet spin asymmetries, hadron-in-jet measurements, spin transfer to $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$ hyperons, and transverse polarization of $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$ hyperons inside jets. They provide valuable constrains to transverse-momentum-dependent (TMD) parton distribution functions and fragmentation functions. In particular, the polarizing fragmentation function, which describes the production of transversely polarized hyperons from unpolarized partons during hadronization, can be directly constrained by the hyperon polarization in jets. These measurements connect perturbative QCD, nucleon spin structure, and spin-related hadronization phenomena. The talk will highlight the role of STAR jet measurements in bridging these areas and discuss their relevance for future studies at the Electron-Ion Collider.