Rapidity dependence of heavy-flavour production in heavy-ion collisions within a full 3+1 transport approach: quenching, elliptic and directed flow

TL;DR

This paper advances heavy-flavour production modeling in heavy-ion collisions by implementing full 3+1 transport simulations, enabling detailed predictions of rapidity-dependent observables like directed flow and forward rapidity distributions, validated against RHIC and LHC data.

Contribution

The study extends the POWLANG transport model to full 3+1 simulations, removing boost-invariance approximation for more accurate rapidity-dependent predictions.

Findings

Predictions match experimental data for heavy-flavour observables.

The model successfully describes rapidity dependence of directed flow.

Enhanced understanding of heavy-flavour dynamics at different rapidities.

Abstract

We extend our POWLANG transport setup for the modelling of heavy-flavour production in heavy-ion collisions to the case of full 3+1 simulations, dropping the approximation of longitudinal boost-invariance of the background medium. This enables us to provide predictions for observables for which the rapidity dependence is essential in order to obtain a non-vanishing signal, like the directed flow $v_1$, and to get reliable results also for kinematic distributions of heavy-flavour particles at forward rapidity. We compare our predictions with experimental data obtained in Au-Au and Pb-Pb collisions at RHIC and at the LHC.