Cracking the difference of estimating heavy quark transport coefficients in a Quark-Gluon Plasma

TL;DR

This paper compares different models of heavy quark transport in Quark-Gluon Plasma, analyzing how assumptions affect observable predictions like suppression and flow, to better understand the plasma's properties.

Contribution

It systematically evaluates the impact of initial conditions and QGP evolution assumptions on heavy quark transport coefficients across various models.

Findings

Transport coefficients vary significantly between models.

Initial conditions and QGP evolution assumptions strongly influence observables.

Standardizing conditions reveals the effects of model assumptions on heavy quark behavior.

Abstract

Heavy flavor observables provide valuable information on the properties of the hot and dense Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions. Various microscopic models have successfully described many of the observables associated with its formation. Their transport coefficients differ, however, due to different assumptions about the underlying interaction of the heavy quarks with the plasma constituents, different initial geometries and formation times, different hadronization processes and a different time evolution of the QGP. In this study we present the transport coefficients of all these models and investigate systematically how some of these assumptions influence the heavy quark properties at the end of the QGP expansion. For this purpose we impose on these models the same initial condition and the same model for the QGP expansion and show that both have considerable influence on $R_{AA}$ and $v_2$.