No Arabic abstract
Heavy flavor probes are sensitive to the properties of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. A huge amount of effort has been devoted to studying different aspects of the heavy-ion collisions using heavy flavor particles. In this work, we study the dynamics of heavy quark transport in the QGP medium using the rapidity dependence of heavy flavor observables. We calculate the nuclear modification of $text{B}$ and $text{D}$ meson spectra as well as spectra of leptons from heavy flavor decays in the rapidity range $[-4.0,4.0]$. We use an implementation of the improved Langevin equation with gluon radiation on top of a (3+1)-dimensional relativistic viscous hydrodynamical background for several collision setups. We find that the rapidity dependence of the heavy quark modification is determined by the interplay between the smaller size of the medium, which affects the path length of the heavy quarks, and the softer heavy quark initial production spectrum. We compare our results with available experimental data and present predictions for open heavy flavor meson $R_text{AA}$ at finite rapidity.
The ultra-relativistic heavy-ion programs at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider have evolved into a phase of quantitative studies of Quantum Chromodynamics at very high temperatures. The charm and bottom hadron production offer unique insights into the remarkable transport properties and the microscopic structure of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in these collisions. Heavy quarks, due to their large masses, undergo Brownian motion at low momentum, provide a window on hadronization mechanisms at intermediate momenta, and are expected to merge into a radiative-energy loss regime at high momentum. We review recent experimental and theoretical achievements on measuring a variety of heavy-flavor observables, characterizing the different regimes in momentum, extracting pertinent transport coefficients and deducing implications for the inner workings of the QGP medium.
We study charm production in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions by using the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach. The initial charm quarks are produced by the PYTHIA event generator tuned to fit the transverse momentum spectrum and rapidity distribution of charm quarks from Fixed-Order Next-to-Leading Logarithm (FONLL) calculations. The produced charm quarks scatter in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) with the off-shell partons whose masses and widths are given by the Dynamical Quasi-Particle Model (DQPM), which reproduces the lattice QCD equation-of-state in thermal equilibrium. The relevant cross sections are calculated in a consistent way by employing the effective propagators and couplings from the DQPM. Close to the critical energy density of the phase transition, the charm quarks are hadronized into $D$ mesons through coalescence and/or fragmentation. The hadronized $D$ mesons then interact with the various hadrons in the hadronic phase with cross sections calculated in an effective lagrangian approach with heavy-quark spin symmetry. The nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ and the elliptic flow $v_2$ of $D^0$ mesons from PHSD are compared with the experimental data from the STAR Collaboration for Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ =200 GeV and to the ALICE data for Pb+Pb collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ =2.76 TeV. We find that in the PHSD the energy loss of $D$ mesons at high $p_T$ can be dominantly attributed to partonic scattering while the actual shape of $R_{AA}$ versus $p_T$ reflects the heavy-quark hadronization scenario, i.e. coalescence versus fragmentation. Also the hadronic rescattering is important for the $R_{AA}$ at low $p_T$ and enhances the $D$-meson elliptic flow $v_2$.
In this work we investigate how event-by-event hydrodynamics fluctuations affect the nuclear suppression factor and elliptic flow of heavy flavor mesons and non-photonic electrons. We use a 2D+1 Lagrangian ideal hydrodynamic code on an event-by-event basis in order to compute local temperature and flow profiles. Using a strong coupling inspired energy loss parametrization on top of the evolving space-time energy density distributions we are able to propagate the heavy quarks inside the medium until the freeze-out temperature is reached and a Pythia modeling of hadronization takes place. The resulting D$^0$ and heavy-flavor electron yield is compared with recent experimental data for $R_text{AA}$ and $v_2$ from the STAR and Phenix collaborations. In addition we present preditions for the higher order Fourier harmonic coefficients $v_3(p_T)$ of heavy-flavor electrons at RHICs $sqrt{S_text{NN}} = 200$ GeV collisions.
Recently it has been shown that a realistic description of the medium via event-by-event viscous hydrodynamics plays an important role in the long-standing $R_text{AA}$ vs. $v_2$ puzzle at high $p_T$. In this proceedings we begin to extend this approach to the heavy flavor sector by investigating the effects of full event-by-event fluctuating hydrodynamic backgrounds on the nuclear suppression factor and $v_2{2}$ of heavy flavor mesons and non-photonic electrons at intermediate to high $p_T$. We also show results for $v_3{2}$ of $B^0$ and D$^0$ for PbPb collisions at $sqrt{s}=2.76$ TeV.
We study the single electron spectra from $D-$ and $B-$meson semileptonic decays in Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{rm NN}}=$200, 62.4, and 19.2 GeV by employing the parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach that has been shown to reasonably describe the charm dynamics at RHIC and LHC energies on a microscopic level. In this approach the initial heavy quarks are produced by using the PYTHIA which is tuned to reproduce the FONLL calculations. The produced heavy quarks interact with off-shell massive partons in QGP with scattering cross sections which are calculated in the dynamical quasi-particle model (DQPM). At energy densities close to the critical energy density the heavy quarks are hadronized into heavy mesons through either coalescence or fragmentation. After hadronization the heavy mesons interact with the light hadrons by employing the scattering cross sections from an effective Lagrangian. The final heavy mesons then produce single electrons through semileptonic decay. We find that the PHSD approach well describes the nuclear modification factor $R_{rm AA}$ and elliptic flow $v_2$ of single electrons in d+Au and Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{rm NN}}=$ 200 GeV and the elliptic flow in Au+Au reactions at $sqrt{s_{rm NN}}=$ 62.4 GeV from the PHENIX collaboration, however, the large $R_{rm AA}$ at $sqrt{s_{rm NN}}=$ 62.4 GeV is not described at all. Furthermore, we make predictions for the $R_{rm AA}$ of $D-$mesons and of single electrons at the lower energy of $sqrt{s_{rm NN}}=$ 19.2 GeV. Additionally, the medium modification of the azimuthal angle $phi$ between a heavy quark and a heavy antiquark is studied. We find that the transverse flow enhances the azimuthal angular distributions close to $phi=$ 0 because the heavy flavors strongly interact with nuclear medium in relativistic heavy-ion collisions and almost flow with the bulk matter.