Quark Recombination and Heavy Quark Diffusion in Hot Nuclear Matter

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quark recombination and heavy quark diffusion affect the formation and flow of heavy mesons in hot nuclear matter, using simulations that incorporate non-perturbative interactions and hydrodynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a realistic modeling approach combining resonance recombination, Langevin simulations, and hydrodynamics to study heavy quark hadronization and flow in heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Recombination is compatible with thermal equilibrium distributions.

Heavy quark phase space distributions are obtained using Langevin simulations.

Recombination and flow significantly influence heavy meson R_AA and elliptic flow.

Abstract

We discuss resonance recombination for quarks and show that it is compatible with quark and hadron distributions in local thermal equilibrium. We then calculate realistic heavy quark phase space distributions in heavy ion collisions using Langevin simulations with non-perturbative T-matrix interactions in hydrodynamic backgrounds. We hadronize the heavy quarks on the critical hypersurface given by hydrodynamics after constructing a criterion for the relative recombination and fragmentation contributions. We discuss the influence of recombination and flow on the resulting heavy meson and single electron R_AA and elliptic flow. We will also comment on the effect of diffusion of open heavy flavor mesons in the hadronic phase.