At the BOOST 2024 conference, the ATLAS Collaboration presented a new technique that employs artificial intelligence (AI) to refine jet calibration, specifically focusing on jets originating from bottom quarks (b-jets).

As the most abundantly produced object in the ATLAS experiment, jets are critical to understanding a number of physics processes. In new results presented at the BOOST 24 conference in Genova (Italy), ATLAS scientists detailed two innovative approaches for more accurately quantifying jet properties.

Collisions of lead nuclei in the LHC form the hot, dense medium known as the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Experimentally, the QGP is characterized by the collective flow of emerging quarks and gluons. They fragment into highly collimated “jets” of particles that in turn lose energy through a phenomenon known as “jet quenching”. Studying this effect can help improve our understanding of quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong nuclear interaction that governs the behaviour of the QGP.