Predictions for energy correlators probing substructure of groomed heavy quark jets

Abstract

Abstract We develop an effective field theory (EFT) framework to perform an analytic calculation for energy correlator observables computed on groomed heavy-quark jets. A soft-drop grooming algorithm is applied to a jet initiated by a massive quark to minimize soft contamination effects such as pile-up and multi-parton interactions. We specifically consider the two-particle energy correlator as an initial application of this EFT framework to compute heavy quark jet substructure. We find that there are different regimes for the event shapes, depending on the size of the measured correlator observable, that require the use of different EFT formulations, in which the quark mass and grooming parameters may be relevant or not. We use the EFT to resum large logarithms in the energy correlator observable in terms of the momentum of a reconstructed heavy hadron to NLL′ accuracy and subsequently match it to a full QCD $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (α s ) cross section, which we also compute. We compare our predictions to simulations in Pythia for e + e − collisions. We find a good agreement with partonic simulations, as well as hadronic ones with an appropriate shape function used to describe nonperturbative effects and the heavy quark hadron decay turned off. We also predict the scaling behavior for the leading nonperturbative power correction due to hadronization. Consequently, we can give a prediction for the energy correlator distribution at the level of the reconstructed heavy hadron. This work provides a general framework for the analysis of heavy quark jet substructure observables.