Momentum dependence of drag coefficients and heavy flavour suppression in quark gluon plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the momentum-dependent drag coefficients influence heavy quark suppression in quark-gluon plasma, highlighting the dominant role of radiative losses in observed suppression at RHIC and LHC.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the momentum dependence of drag coefficients and their impact on heavy flavor suppression, offering insights into QGP properties using heavy quarks as probes.

Findings

Momentum dependence of transport coefficients is crucial for heavy quark suppression.

Radiative energy losses primarily cause the observed suppression.

Results align with experimental data from RHIC and LHC.

Abstract

The momentum dependence of the drag coefficient of heavy quarks propagating through quark gluon plasma (QGP) has been evaluated. The results have been used to estimate the nuclear suppression factor of charm and bottom quarks in QGP. We observe that the momentum dependence of the transport coefficients plays crucial role in the suppression of the heavy quarks and consequently in discerning the properties of QGP using heavy flavours as a probe. We show that the large suppression of the heavy quarks observed at RHIC and LHC is predominantly due to the radiative losses. The suppression of $D^0$ in Pb+Pb collisions at LHC energy - recently measured by the ALICE collaboration has also been studied.