Transverse momentum spectra of inclusive b jets in pPb collisions at √ s NN = 5.02 TeV

Abstract

We present a measurement of b jet transverse momentum (p T ) spectra in proton-lead (pPb) collisions using a dataset corresponding to about 35 nb −1 collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. Jets from b quark fragmentation are found by exploiting the long lifetime of hadrons containing a b quark through tagging methods using distributions of the secondary vertex mass and displacement. Extracted cross sections for b jets are scaled by the effective number of nucleon–nucleon collisions and are compared to a reference obtained from PYTHIA simulations of pp collisions. The PYTHIA-based estimate of the nuclear modification factor is found to be 1.22±0.15(stat+syst pPb)±0.27(syst PYTHIA) averaged over all jets with p T between 55 and 400 GeV/c and with |η lab |<2. We also compare this result to predictions from models using perturbative calculations in quantum chromodynamics. ©2016