Jet Measurements in Heavy Ion Collisions with an Upgraded PHENIX Detector

The PHENIX Collaboration is pursuing an upgrade to the PHENIX detector to enable investigations of specific, outstanding questions that will advance our understanding of the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP). The greatly upgraded detector, called sPHENIX, consists of a superconducting solenoid and electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters with a fiducial acceptance of Δφ = 2π and |η| < 1 around an existing silicon tracking detector, the VTX. It will have excellent capabilities for measuring an important set of jet observables. These measurements, in conjunction with similar measurements at the LHC, will provide information about energy loss, transport coefficients, and the fundamental constituents of the sQGP in the domain of strongest coupling, near Tc.