# Charmed hadron production in an improved quark coalescence model

## TL;DR

This paper introduces an improved quark coalescence model that incorporates collective flow effects to better describe charmed hadron production in heavy-ion collisions, matching experimental data.

## Contribution

The model extends traditional coalescence by aligning hadron velocity with quark center-of-mass velocity, accounting for flow effects in quark-gluon plasma.

## Key findings

- Accurately reproduces the $ ext{Lambda}_c^+/D^0$ ratio as a function of $p_T$
- Shows the importance of collective flow in charm hadronization
- Provides a better understanding of charm quark hadronization mechanisms

## Abstract

We study the production of charmed hadrons $D^{0}$ and $\Lambda_c^+$ in relativistic heavy-ion collisions using an improved quark coalescence model. In particular, we extend the usual coalescence model by letting a produced hadron to have the same velocity as the center-of-mass velocity of coalesced constituent quarks during hadronization to take into account the effect of collective flow in produced quark-gluon plasma. This results in a shift of charmed resonances of higher masses to larger transverse momenta ($p_T^{}$). Requiring all charm quarks of very low $p_T^{}$ to be converted to hadrons via coalescence and letting charm quarks not undergoing coalescence to hadronize by independent fragmentation, we obtain a good description of the measured yield ratio $\Lambda_c^+/D^0$ as a function of $p_T^{}$ in $\text{Au} + \text{Au}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}^{}=200$~GeV by the STAR Collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.