New Results on Hard Probes in Heavy-Ion Collisions with ALICE

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Hard probes - final state particles related to an interaction with large momentum transfer or mass scale - play a distinguished role in the discovery and the study of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a phase of deconfined quarks and gluons reached at high temperatures in heavy ion collisions. In heavy ion collisions, parton scatterings with a large momentum transfer (1/Q ≪ 1 fm/c) occur prior to QGP formation and thus provide a source of coloured probe particles for the QGP created in the later stage of the reaction. The hard scattered partons and the subsequent parton shower interact strongly with the QGP and its constituents via elastic and radiative processes before hadronization into jets of observable particles. Thus, the comparison to jet and high-pₜ observables in pp (vacuum) potentially probes their modification due to medium effects. One of the key observables in the discovery and investigation of these jet modifications has been the nuclear modification factor RAA, for which new results on charged particle production in different colliding systems are presented and the question of apparant suppression in peripheral Pb-Pb collisions is addressed. Fore more differential studies of the jet sub-structure and hence the parton shower evolution in the medium, recent results on jet grooming in heavy ion colisions are presented.