Heavy flavor suppression: role of hadronic matter

TL;DR

This study investigates how hadronic matter contributes to the suppression of open heavy-flavored mesons in nuclear collisions, revealing significant effects at RHIC energies but marginal influence at LHC energies, thus aiding QGP characterization.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed calculation of hadronic suppression factors for heavy mesons at RHIC and LHC energies, highlighting their energy-dependent significance.

Findings

Hadronic suppression is 20-25% for D mesons at RHIC.

Hadronic suppression is 10-12% for D mesons at LHC.

Suppression effects are more significant at RHIC than at LHC.

Abstract

The role of hadronic matter in the suppression of open heavy flavored mesons has been studied. The heavy-quarks (HQs) suppression factors have been calculated and contrasted with the experimental data obtained from nuclear collisions at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and Large Hadronic Collider (LHC) experiments. It is found that the suppression in the hadronic phase at RHIC energy is around $20%-25%$ whereas at the LHC it is around $10%-12%$ for the D meson. In case of B meson the hadronic suppression is around $10%-12%$ and $5%-6%$ at RHIC and LHC energies respectively. Present study suggests that the suppression of heavy flavor in the hadronic phase is significant at RHIC. However, the effect of hadronic suppression at LHC is marginal, this makes the characterization of QGP at LHC less complicated.