La Physique des gamma-jets avec le calorimètre EMCal de l'expérience ALICE au LHC

Heavy ion collisions at LHC will produce a new state of matter : the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Photons are not sensible to the strong interaction which dominates the nuclear medium, and hence are a valuable tool to explore QGP. Gamma-jets are rare hard processes : a photon and a parton are emitted back-to-back. The parton hadronises and produces a jet of particles. These jets are quenched due to the strong interaction of the parton with the QGP. This quenching, or more precisely the re-distribution of the energy in the jet, can be measured by the modification of the distribution of the particle energy in the jet, comparing p-p and Pb-Pb collisions (fragmentation functions or hump-backed plateau distributions). For this porpose, jet energy is needed, and can be provided precisely by gamma-jet measurement. Our goal is to use EMCal to detect a photon correlated with a jet reconstructed in ALICE tracking system. Then, the jet energy distribution are compared for p-p an Pb-Pb collisions. Gamma-jet physics is first addressed, the particle identification with EMCal is introduced to isolate the direct photon, i.e. a photon and a jet emitted back-to-back. Methods of jet identification and reconstruction are developed to determine hump-backed plateau distributions. Finally, these methods are tested to evaluate ALICE and particularly EMCal capabilities for gamma-jet study at LHC and to quantify the sensibility of this probe to explore the QGP.