Momentum Imbalance of Isolated Photon-Tagged Jet Production at RHIC and LHC

In collisions of ultrarelativistic nuclei, photon-tagged jets provide a unique opportunity to compare jet production and modification due to parton shower formation and propagation in strongly interacting matter at vastly different center-of-mass energies. We present first results for the cross sections of jets tagged by an isolated photon to O(alpha(em)alpha(2)(s)) in central Au + Au reactions with root S-NN = 200 GeV at RHIC and central Pb + Pb reactions with root S-NN = 2.76 TeV at LHC. We evaluate the increase in the transverse momentum imbalance of the observed gamma + jet state, induced by the dissipation of the parton shower energy due to strong final-state interactions. Theoretical predictions to help interpret recent and upcoming experimental data are presented. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.142001