Charm quarks in medium and their contribution to di-electron spectra in relativistic heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates charm quark dynamics in a quark-gluon plasma and their impact on di-electron spectra in heavy ion collisions, using a Langevin approach with lattice QCD-informed transport coefficients.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation of charm quark transport in medium using the Langevin equation with in-medium T-matrix derived coefficients, and compares di-electron spectra to experimental data.

Findings

Charm quark angular correlations remain back-to-back in both p+p and Au+Au collisions.

Di-electron spectra show minimal medium modification in the studied mass range.

Transport coefficients are consistent with lattice QCD results.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of charm quarks in the partonic medium and its implication to the di-electron spectra in high energy heavy ion collisions. The charm quarks traversing a thermal medium is simulated by the relativistic Langevin equation for elastic scatterings of charm quarks by thermal partons in an expanding fireball. The transport coefficients of charm quarks are calculated by the in-medium T-matrix method, where a static heavy quark potential is used with parameters fitted by the lattice QCD results. The di-electron invariant mass spectra are computed in most central collisions and are compared to the STAR data. The angular correlations of di-electrons are almost the same in $p+p$ and Au+Au collisions in the mass range $1.1<M<2.5~\mathrm{GeV/c^2}$ with the back-to-back feature. This means that the angular correlation is intact even with medium interaction at the RHIC energy.