On Z and Z + jet production in heavy ion collisions

Z + jet production in heavy ion collisions at the LHC is proposed as a possible probe of the properties of the dense hadronic matter. It is shown that the accuracy of this measurement with general purpose LHC detectors and under realistic experimental conditions can be high enough. It is argued also that Z-boson production and subsequent leptonic decay is a good reference process for this measurement, as well as for the QCD process of high P_T jet pair production.