Investigation of boosted W bosons in vacuum and the quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

Because the W boson has no color charge, it will not be affected by a strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma. This allows us to observe the quark-gluon plasma at different time scales. In this thesis, we try to observe the effects of jet quenching on the quark- antiquark decay particles of a W boson. We use two different simulation programs for this. Pythia8 can simulate hard scattering with weak coupling and Jewel van simulate hard scattering with the creation of QGP. For Pythia8 we plotted the groomed mass and fitted it with a double-sided crystal ball function. Then we plotted the groomed mass for Jewel and compared the two plots. We predict the Jewel plots to have the same double-sided crystal ball function but with a difference in the Gaussian or tail. We found that Pythia8 and Jewel have the same fit however the Jewel plot is thinner and longer in shape.