Energy-Energy Correlators in Z-Tagged Jets in pp Collisions
Abstract
We present predictions for the collinear energy-energy correlator (EEC) measured inside Z-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions across the confinement transition. Our framework combines transverse-momentum-dependent factorization for back-to-back Z+jet production with an exclusive differential EEC jet function incorporating perturbative evolution and flavor-dependent non-perturbative fragmentation. The EEC jet function is evaluated at NLL′ accuracy, with separate quark and gluon non-perturbative scales constrained by existing e+e- and inclusive-jet data. We provide predictions for forward Z+jet production at √s=8 TeV and 13 TeV in the jet transverse-momentum intervals $(20, 30)$, $(30, 50)$ and (50, 100) GeV. The EEC distributions as functions of zχ exhibit finite plateaus at small zχ, while the corresponding angular distributions display the characteristic turnover associated with the confinement transition. A flavor decomposition shows that this transition becomes increasingly dominated by quark-initiated jets as the jet transverse momentum increases. Forward Z-tagged jets therefore provide a clean probe of non-perturbative quark fragmentation and offer a direct test of whether the characteristic confinement scale extracted from e+e- collisions remains universal in a hadronic environment.
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BibTeX
@misc{barata2026energyenergy,
title = {{Energy-Energy Correlators in $Z$-Tagged Jets in $pp$ Collisions}},
author = {João Barata and Zhong-Bo Kang and Xoán Mayo López and Jani Penttala and Yiyu Zhou},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.03072},
eprint = {2609.03072},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03072},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Energy-Energy Correlators in Z-Tagged Jets in pp Collisions
AU - João Barata
AU - Zhong-Bo Kang
AU - Xoán Mayo López
AU - Jani Penttala
AU - Yiyu Zhou
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.03072
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03072
AB - We present predictions for the collinear energy-energy correlator (EEC) measured inside Z-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions across the confinement transition. Our framework combines transverse-momentum-dependent factorization for back-to-back Z+jet production with an exclusive differential EEC jet function incorporating perturbative evolution and flavor-dependent non-perturbative fragmentation. The EEC jet function is evaluated at NLL^′ accuracy, with separate quark and gluon non-perturbative scales constrained by existing e^+e^- and inclusive-jet data. We provide predictions for forward Z+jet production at √s=8 TeV and 13 TeV in the jet transverse-momentum intervals $(20, 30)$, $(30, 50)$ and (50, 100) GeV. The EEC distributions as functions of z_χ exhibit finite plateaus at small z_χ, while the corresponding angular distributions display the characteristic turnover associated with the confinement transition. A flavor decomposition shows that this transition becomes increasingly dominated by quark-initiated jets as the jet transverse momentum increases. Forward Z-tagged jets therefore provide a clean probe of non-perturbative quark fragmentation and offer a direct test of whether the characteristic confinement scale extracted from e^+e^- collisions remains universal in a hadronic environment.
ER -