Measurement of D-meson azimuthal anisotropy in Au+Au 200 GeV collisions at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper reports the measurement of D meson azimuthal anisotropy in gold-gold collisions at 200 GeV, providing insights into charm quark thermalization and energy loss mechanisms in the quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

First measurement of D meson elliptic flow at RHIC using the STAR Heavy Flavor Tracker, revealing charm quark participation in medium flow and constraining diffusion coefficients.

Findings

D meson $v_2$ is finite for $p_T > 2$ GeV/c.

Charm flow is consistent with medium participation.

Results favor models where charm quarks thermalize with the medium.

Abstract

Heavy quarks are produced through initial hard scatterings and they are affected by the hot and dense medium created in heavy-ion collisions throughout its whole evolution. Due to their heavy mass, charm quarks are expected to thermalize much more slowly than light flavor quarks. The charm quark flow is a unique tool to study the extent of thermalization of the bulk medium dominated by light quarks and gluons. At high $p_T$, D meson azimuthal anisotropy is sensitive to the path length dependence of charm quark energy loss in the medium, which offers new insights into heavy quark energy loss mechanisms - gluon radiation vs. collisional processes. We present the STAR measurement of elliptic flow ($v_2$) of $D^0$ and $D^{\pm}$ mesons in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV, for a wide transverse momentum range. These results are obtained from the data taken in the first year of physics running of the new STAR Heavy Flavor Tracker detector, which greatly improves open heavy flavor hadron measurements by the topological reconstruction of secondary decay vertices. The D meson $v_2$ is finite for $p_T > 2 \text{ GeV/c}^2$ and systematically below the measurement of light particle species at the same energy. Comparison to a series of model calculations favors scenarios where charm flows with the medium and is used to infer a range for the charm diffusion coefficient $2\pi T D_s$.