Measurements of charged particle distributions, sensitive to the underlying event, have been performed with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are based on data collected using a minimum-bias trigger to select proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energies of 900 GeV and 7 TeV. The 'underlying event' is defined as those aspects of a hadronic interaction attributed not to the hard scattering process, but rather to the accompanying interactions of the rest of the proton. Three regions are defined in azimuthal angle with respect to the highest-pt charged particle in the event, such that the region transverse to the dominant momentum-flow is most sensitive to the underlying event. In each of these regions, distributions of the charged particle multiplicity, pt density, and average pt are measured. The data show a higher underlying event activity than that predicted by Monte Carlo models tuned to pre-LHC data.
Particle Number Density versus Lead Particle PT at centre-of-mass energy 900 GeV.
Particle Number Density versus Lead Particle PT at centre-of-mass energy 7000 GeV.
Particle PT Density versus Lead Particle PT at centre-of-mass energy 900 GeV.
Using the ATLAS detector, observations have been made of a centrality-dependent dijet asymmetry in the collisions of lead ions at the Large Hadron Collider. In a sample of lead-lead events with a per-nucleon center of mass energy of 2.76 TeV, selected with a minimum bias trigger, jets are reconstructed in fine-grained, longitudinally-segmented electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters. The underlying event is measured and subtracted event-by-event, giving estimates of jet transverse energy above the ambient background. The transverse energies of dijets in opposite hemispheres is observed to become systematically more unbalanced with increasing event centrality leading to a large number of events which contain highly asymmetric dijets. This is the first observation of an enhancement of events with such large dijet asymmetries, not observed in proton-proton collisions, and which may point to an interpretation in terms of strong jet energy loss in a hot, dense medium.
Asymmetry in the different centrality regions for 2.76 TeV/Nucleon PB-PB collisions.
Asymmetry in 7 TeV P-P collisions.
DeltaPhi distribution in the different centrality regions for 2.76 TeV/Nucleon PB-PB collisions.
A measurement of the underlying activity in scattering processes with transverse momentum scale in the GeV region is performed in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 0.9 TeV, using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Charged hadron production is studied with reference to the direction of a leading object, either a charged particle or a set of charged particles forming a jet. Predictions of several QCD-inspired models as implemented in PYTHIA are compared, after full detector simulation, to the data. The models generally predict too little production of charged hadrons with pseudorapidity eta < 2, p_T > 0.5 GeV/c, and azimuthal direction transverse to that of the leading object.
Average multiplicity of charged particles per unit of pseudorapidity as a function of pseudorapidity for events with leading track-jet transverse momenta > 1 and > 3 GeV. Statistical errors only.
Average scalar sum of the transverse momenta of charged particles per unit of pseusdorapidity and per radian as a function of DELTA(PHI) for events with leading track-jet transverse momenta > 1 and > 2 GeV. Statistical errors only. Typical systematic error of 1.8 PCT at a leading track-jet PT of 3.5 GeV.
The average multiplicity and average scalar sum of transverse momenta of charge particles per unit of pseudorapidity and per radian as a function of the leading track transverse momenta. Statistical errors only. Typical systematic error of 1.8 PCT at a leading track-jet PT of 3.5 GeV.