The propagation of the heavy quarks produced in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC and LHC is studied within the framework of Langevin dynamics in the background of an expanding deconfined medium described by ideal and viscous hydrodynamics. The transport coefficients entering into the relativistic Langevin equation are evaluated by matching the hard-thermal-loop result for soft collisions with a perturbative QCD calculation for hard scatterings. The heavy-quark spectra thus obtained are employed to compute the differential cross sections, the nuclear modification factors R_AA and the elliptic flow coefficients v_2 of electrons from heavy-flavour decay.
The stochastic dynamics of c and b quarks in the fireball created in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC and LHC is studied employing a relativistic Langevin equation, based on a picture of multiple uncorrelated random collisions with the medium. Heavy-quark transport coefficients are evaluated within a pQCD approach, with a proper HTL resummation of medium effects for soft scatterings. The Langevin equation is embedded in a multi-step setup developed to study heavy-flavor observables in pp and AA collisions, starting from a NLO pQCD calculation of initial heavy-quark yields, complemented in the nuclear case by shadowing corrections, k_T-broadening and nuclear geometry effects. Then, only for AA collisions, the Langevin equation is solved numerically in a background medium described by relativistic hydrodynamics. Finally, the propagated heavy quarks are made hadronize and decay into electrons. Results for the nuclear modification factor R_AA of heavy-flavor hadrons and electrons from their semi-leptonic decays are provided, both for RHIC and LHC beam energies.
Using a model based on the Color Glass Condensate framework and the dilute-dense factorization, we systematically study the azimuthal angular correlations between a heavy flavor meson and a light reference particle in proton-nucleus collisions. The obtained second harmonic coefficients (also known as the elliptic flows) for $J/psi$ and $D^0$ agree with recent experimental data from the LHC. We also provide predictions for the elliptic flows of $Upsilon$ and $B$ meson, which can be measured in the near future at the LHC. This work can shed light on the physics origin of the collectivity phenomenon in the collisions of small systems.
The distributions of outgoing protons and charged hadrons in high energy proton-nucleus collisions are described rather well by a linear extrapolation from proton-proton collisions. This linear extrapolation is applied to precisely measured Drell-Yan cross sections for 800 GeV protons incident on a variety of nuclear targets. The deviation from linear scaling in the atomic number A can be accounted for by energy degradation of the proton as it passes through the nucleus if account is taken of the time delay of particle production due to quantum coherence. We infer an average proper coherence time of 0.4 +/- 0.1 fm/c. Then we apply the linear extrapolation to measured J/psi production cross sections for 200 and 450 GeV/c protons incident on a variety of nuclear targets. Our analysis takes into account energy loss of the beam proton, the time delay of particle production due to quantum coherence, and absorption of the J/psi on nucleons. The best representation is obtained for a coherence time of 0.5 fm/c, which is consistent with Drell-Yan production, and an absorption cross section of 3.6 mb, which is consistent with the value deduced from photoproduction of the J/psi on nuclear targets. Finally, we compare to recent J/psi data from S+U and Pb+Pb collisions at the SPS. The former are reproduced reasonably well with no new parameters, but not the latter.
Color fluctuations in hadron-hadron collisions are responsible for the presence of inelastic diffraction and lead to distinctive differences between the Gribov picture of high energy scattering and the low energy Glauber picture. We find that color fluctuations give a larger contribution to the fluctuations of the number of wounded nucleons than the fluctuations of the number of nucleons at a given impact parameter. The two contributions for the impact parameter averaged fluctuations are comparable. As a result, standard procedures for selecting peripheral (central) collisions lead to selection of configurations in the projectile which interact with smaller (larger) than average strength. We suggest that studies of pA collisions with a hard trigger may allow to observe effects of color fluctuations.
We make a theoretical and experimental summary of the state-of-the-art status of hot and dense QCD matter studies on selected topics. We review the Beam Energy Scan program for the QCD phase diagram and present the current status of search for QCD Critical Point, particle production in high baryon density region, hypernuclei production, and global polarization effects in nucleus-nucleus collisions. The available experimental data in the strangeness sector suggests that a grand canonical approach in thermal model at high collision energy makes a transition to the canonical ensemble behavior at low energy. We further discuss future prospects of nuclear collisions to probe properties of baryon-rich matter. Creation of a quark-gluon plasma at high temperature and low baryon density has been called the Little-Bang and, analogously, a femtometer-scale explosion of baryon-rich matter at lower collision energy could be called the Femto-Nova, which may possibly sustain substantial vorticity and magnetic field for non-head-on collisions.