Effect of thermalized charm on heavy quark energy loss

TL;DR

This paper investigates how thermalized charm quarks influence heavy quark energy loss in quark-gluon plasma, revealing increased energy loss due to thermal charm and effects of running coupling at LHC energies.

Contribution

It introduces the effect of thermalized charm quarks on heavy quark energy loss, including the impact of running coupling at high temperatures.

Findings

Energy loss of charm quarks increases with thermalized charm inclusion.

Running coupling causes a modest increase in energy loss at higher temperatures.

Heavy-heavy scattering contributes significantly to energy loss at LHC energies.

Abstract

The recent experimental results on the flow of $J/\psi$ at LHC show that ample amount of charm quarks is present in the quark gluon plasma and probably they are thermalized. In the current study we investigate the effect of thermalized charm quarks on the heavy quark energy loss to leading order in the QCD coupling constant. It is seen that the energy loss of charm quark increases due to the inclusion of thermal charm quarks. Running coupling has also been implemented to study heavy quark energy loss and we find a modest increase in the heavy quark energy loss due to heavy-heavy scattering at higher temperature to be realized at LHC energies.