Production and elliptic flow of heavy quarks at RHIC and LHC within a partonic transport model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the production and elliptic flow of heavy quarks in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC using the BAMPS transport model, highlighting the importance of secondary production at LHC and the limitations of leading order processes.

Contribution

It provides a detailed simulation of heavy quark production and flow, emphasizing the role of secondary production at LHC and assessing the adequacy of leading order processes.

Findings

Secondary heavy quark production is negligible at RHIC but significant at LHC.

Leading order processes do not fully explain the observed elliptic flow of charm quarks.

The model compares initial yields from mini-jet and PYTHIA, showing differences based on parton distribution functions.

Abstract

Production and elliptic flow of heavy quarks are investigated in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC and LHC within the Boltzmann Approach of MultiParton Scatterings (BAMPS). The initial heavy quark yield is estimated with the leading order mini-jet model and compared to PYTHIA for several parton distribution functions. Secondary production of heavy quarks in the quark-gluon plasma is examined within the full 3+1 dimensional BAMPS simulation of heavy ion collisions. At RHIC this yield is negligible, but for LHC charm production in the QGP plays a significant role. In addition, we study the elliptic flow of charm quarks at RHIC with the result that leading order processes are not sufficient to describe the experimental data.