Direct Photon-Hadron Correlations in RHIC Collisions

Direct photon-hadron correlations from photon-jet pairs are an important tool to study jet energy loss and jet modification in Heavy Ion collisions since the direct photon escapes the medium without strong interaction and can act as a control or energy calibrator to the opposing jet in the same event. Due to the large background of meson decay photons from di-jets, measurements are experimentally difficult, and further complications in interpretations arise from Bremmstrahlung-like fragmentation photons also associated with di-jets. First measurements of direct photon-jet correlations have been performed by both PHENIX and STAR. Implications of these results and the status of future improvements will be discussed.