Prerequisites for heavy quark coalescence in heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the conditions necessary for heavy quark coalescence during hadronization in heavy-ion collisions, revealing that the quark-gluon plasma exhibits strong correlations rather than complete randomness prior to hadron formation.

Contribution

It demonstrates that heavy quark hadronization via coalescence requires correlated partons in color, momentum, and coordinate spaces, challenging the assumption of complete randomness in the QGP.

Findings

QGP has strong correlations in color and momentum spaces before hadronization.

Heavy quark coalescence is favored in a non-random, correlated partonic environment.

The model combines coalescence and statistical approaches for different heavy flavor states.

Abstract

The coalescence model assumes instant formation of a bound state from unbound particles based on the overlapping of two states in spatial and momentum spaces and quantum numbers. Therefore, applied to the hadronization of partons, it provides a snapshot of a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) just before hadronization. We use the coalescence model for the formation of the ground state of open heavy flavor and the statistical model for heavier states. Assuming that all heavy flavors in thermal equilibrium hadronize through the coalescence, we find that the QGP just before hadronization is not composed of completely randomized partons but must have strong correlations in color charges as well as in momentum and/or coordinate spaces between heavy quark and light (anti-)quark.