Speaker
Ali Hanks
Description
Direct photon tagged jets, in the form of photon-hadron correlations, are well
suited to provide unique insight into how jets interact with the quark
gluon plasma. Since high momentum photons are unmodified by the
strongly coupled medium produced at RHIC, the measured photon momentum
approximately balances that of the away-side parton. Therefore, the effective
modification to the fragmentation function can be measured by comparing
integrated away-side yields in direct photon-hadron correlations in Au+Au
collisions to those in p+p. By varying the away-side integration range, the
angular dependence of modification to the effective fragmentation function can
also be studied. Direct photon-hadron correlations have been measured with
PHENIX in p+p and Au+Au using a statistical subtraction technique to remove the
decay photon contribution from the inclusive photon-hadron correlations, with an
additional isolation cut applied in p+p. These recently published results will
be discussed in light of complementary results from STAR and the LHC, as well as
qualitative comparisons with theoretical predictions.
