Centrality dependence of high energy jets in p+Pb collisions at the LHC
Recently measured centrality dependence of high energy jets in proton-lead collisions at the LHC is investigated. We hypothesize that events with jets of very high energy (a few hundred GeV) are characterized by a suppressed number of soft particles thus shifting these events into more peripheral bins. This naturally results in the suppression (enhancement) of the nuclear modification factor, RpA, in central (peripheral) collisions. Our calculations suggest that a moderate suppression of the order of 20% can quantitatively reproduce the experimental data. We further propose an independent experimental test to verify this hypothesis.