Tracking Lost Jet Energy in Individual Collisions: New Insights to Quark-Gluon Plasma Study

The investigation of jet energy loss in high-energy proton-proton (pp) collisions offers crucial insights into the properties of Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) and strongly interacting matter. In this study, we simulate 10,000 pp collision events using the Pythia event generator, followed by jet clustering via the longitudinally invariant anti-k_t algorithm implemented in Fastjet. The analysis focuses on examining missing transverse momentum (MET) and jet momentum imbalances to identify a mechanisms behind the potential energy loss on an event-by-event basis. Our results reveal a significant correlation between large MET values and low p_T2/p_T1 ratios, indicative of pronounced momentum imbalance between the leading and sub-leading jets. These findings suggest a substantial jet energy loss. Which is likely due to the medium interactions with implications for studying jet quenching phenomena in QGP. This work introduces a refined methodology for assessing jet quenching at a level of individual events, providing a detailed characterization of jet-medium interactions and contributing to the broader understanding of energy loss in high-energy nuclear collisions.