The XXVI Quark Matter conference on ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions was held recently in Chicago, USA from 5 Feb to 11 Feb 2017. The MITHIG sent a 11-member delegation to the conference and contributed to the proceedings with a plenary talk by Prof. Yen-Jie Lee summarizing the recent exciting results from the CMS heavy-ion group, 2 talks in the parallel sessions and 3 posters. Prof. Gunther Roland also gave a student lecture on the evolution of jet measurements as probes of the Quark Gluon Plasma, as a prelude to the conference.
Ta-Wei Wang presented results on open beauty production and modification in PbPb collisions with CMS, including the first measurement of fully reconstructed B mesons in PbPb collisions. These measurements are important for their ability to determine the flavour-dependence of energy loss in the medium. A strong suppression of both J/psi particles from B meson decays and fully reconstructed B mesons was observed. Ran Bi presented the latest results on energy loss in photon-jet and Z-jet events in PbPb collisions. These measurements are able to precisely characterize the jet energy loss by using the energy of the unquenched boson as a reference. The results show a clear dependence of the jet energy loss on the transverse momentum of the photon and the centrality of the collisions.
In the poster session, Jing Wang presented the latest results on the D meson nuclear modification factor (RAA) in PbPb at 5.02 TeV, Austin Baty presented the latest results on the charged particle nuclear modification factor in both pPb and PbPb at 5.02 TeV while Dr. Gian Michele Innocenti presented the latest results on the B meson nuclear modification factor in PbPb at 5.02 TeV. Gian Michele’s poster was also selected as one of the best posters out of around 300 total posters, and was promoted to a plenary flash talk that was given on the last day of the conference.
