Modeling of heavy-flavor pair correlations in Au-Au collisions at 200 A GeV at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

TL;DR

This paper models the correlations between heavy quark pairs in heavy-ion collisions to understand their energy loss and medium interactions using a combined Langevin and hydrodynamics approach.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid model combining Langevin dynamics, viscous hydrodynamics, and hybrid hadronization to study heavy-flavor correlations in Au-Au collisions.

Findings

Transverse momentum imbalance reflects total energy loss of heavy quarks.

Angular correlations are sensitive to the energy loss mechanism.

Results can help probe the properties of the quark-gluon plasma.

Abstract

We study the nuclear modification of angular and momentum correlations between heavy quark pairs in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. The evolution of heavy quarks inside the thermalized medium is described via a modified Langevin approach that incorporates both elastic and inelastic interactions with the medium constituents. The spacetime evolution of the fireball is obtained from a (2+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics simulation. The hadronization of heavy quarks is performed utilizing a hybrid model of fragmentation and coalescence. Our results show that the nuclear modification of the transverse momentum imbalance of D\bar{D} pairs reflects the total energy loss experienced by the heavy quarks and may help us probe specific regions of the medium. The angular correlation of heavy flavor pairs, especially in the low to intermediate transverse momentum regime, is sensitive to the detailed energy loss mechanism of heavy quarks inside the QGP.