The primordial matter of quarks and gluons, which filled our universe just after few micro-seconds of its creation through Big Bang, is expected to be created in the laboratory by colliding nuclei at relativistic energies. The ongoing nuclear collision programs at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are two experimental facilities, where matter in the state of Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) can be created and characterized. Heavy quarks, mainly charm and bottom quarks, are considered as novel probes to characterize QGP, and hence the QCD matter. Heavy quark diffusion coefficients play a significant role to understand the properties of QCD matter. Experimental measurements of nuclear suppression factor and elliptic flow are able to constrain the heavy quark diffusion coefficients, which is a key ingredient for the phenomenological study and disentangle different energy loss models. We give a general perspective of heavy quark diffusion coefficient in QGP and discuss its potential as a probe to disentangle different hadronization mechanisms, as well as to probe the initial electromagnetic field produced in non-central collisions. Experimental perspective on future measurements are discussed with special emphasis on heavy-flavors as next generation probes.
Download