Abstract:We report the measurement of a new observable of jet quenching in central Pb-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 2.76 TeV, based on the semi-inclusive rate of charged jets recoiling from a high transverse momentum (high-p T ) charged hadron trigger. Jets are measured using collinear-safe jet reconstruction with infrared cutoff for jet constituents of 0.15 GeV, for jet resolution parameters R = 0.2, 0.4 and 0.5. Underlying event background is corrected at the event-ensemble level, without imposing bias on the jet population. Recoil jet spectra are reported in the range 20 < p ch T,jet < 100 GeV. Reference distributions for pp collisions at √ s = 2.76 TeV are calculated using Monte Carlo and NLO pQCD methods, which are validated by comparing with measurements in pp collisions at √ s = 7 TeV. The recoil jet yield in central Pb-Pb collisions is found to be suppressed relative to that in pp collisions. No significant medium-induced broadening of the intra-jet energy profile is observed within 0.5 radians relative to the recoil jet axis. The angular distribution of the recoil jet yield relative to the trigger axis is found to be similar in central Pb-Pb and pp collisions, with no significant medium-induced acoplanarity observed. Large-angle jet deflection, which may provide a direct probe of the nature of the quasi-particles in hot QCD matter, is explored. [17][18][19][20] and enhancement in the rate of energy-imbalanced back-to-back di-jet pairs [21,22] have also been observed in nuclear collisions. A measurement of event-averaged missing p T suggests that the radiated energy induced by the interaction of an energetic parton with the medium is carried to a significant extent by soft particles at large angles relative to the jet axis [23].The measurement of reconstructed jets over a wide range in jet energy and jet resolution parameter (R) is required for comprehensive understanding of jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions. Such measurements are challenging, however, due to the presence of complex, uncorrelated background to the jet signal, and the need to minimize biases in the selected jet population imposed by background suppression techniques. Multiple, complementary measurement approaches, differing both in instrumentation and in analysis algorithm, are therefore important to elucidate the physics of jet quenching using reconstructed jets.In this article we present a new approach to the measurement of jet quenching, based on the semi-inclusive distribution of charged jets recoiling from a high-p T charged hadron trigger ("h-jet" coincidence) in central (0-10%) Pb-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 2.76 TeV. Jets are reconstructed using charged particle tracks with the k T [24] and anti-k T algorithms [25], with infrared cutoff for tracks p T,const > 0.15 GeV/c. Uncorrelated background to the recoil jet signal is corrected solely at the level of ensemble-averaged distributions, without eventby-event discrimination of jet signal from background, using a technique that exploits the phenomenology of jet production in QCD. The...