Heavy flavours in heavy-ion collisions: quenching, flow and correlations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how heavy-flavour particles behave in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions, focusing on quenching, flow, and correlations, using an extended POWLANG model that includes medium-influenced hadronization.

Contribution

The study introduces an improved modeling of heavy quark hadronization in the medium, enhancing predictions of flow and correlations in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Flow of light quarks significantly influences D meson R_AA and v_2.

The model achieves better agreement with experimental data.

Predictions for heavy-flavour hadron correlations are provided.

Abstract

We present results for the quenching, elliptic flow and azimuthal correlations of heavy flavour particles in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions obtained through the POWLANG transport setup, developed in the past to study the propagation of heavy quarks in the Quark-Gluon Plasma and here extended to include a modeling of their hadronization in the presence of a medium. Hadronization is described as occurring via the fragmentation of strings with endpoints given by the heavy (anti-)quark Q(Qbar) and a thermal parton qbar(q) from the medium. The flow of the light quarks is shown to affect significantly the R_AA and v_2 of the final D mesons, leading to a better agreement with the experimental data. The approach allows also predictions for the angular correlation between heavy-flavour hadrons (or their decay electrons) and the charged particles produced in the fragmentation of the heavy-quark strings.