Charm production: constraints to transport models and charm diffusion coefficient with ALICE

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of charm mesons and baryons in Pb-Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV, providing constraints on transport models and the charm diffusion coefficient in the quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

It presents new experimental data on charm-hadron production and anisotropy, offering insights to refine theoretical models of heavy-quark transport and hadronisation in the QGP.

Findings

Measurements of nuclear modification factor and azimuthal anisotropy of charm hadrons.

Constraints on charm diffusion coefficient in the quark-gluon plasma.

Insights into in-medium charm-quark energy loss and hadronisation processes.

Abstract

In this contribution, the nuclear modification factor and azimuthal anisotropy of prompt charm mesons and baryons in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}=5.02$ TeV by the ALICE Collaboration are presented. Heavy quarks are a very suitable probe to investigate the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced in heavy-ion collisions, since they are mainly produced in hard-scattering processes and hence in shorter timescales compared to the QGP. Measurements of charm-hadron production in nucleus-nucleus collisions are therefore useful to study the properties of the in-medium charm-quark energy loss via the comparison with theoretical models. Models describing the heavy-flavour transport and energy loss in a hydrodynamically expanding QGP require also a precise modelling of the in-medium hadronisation of heavy quarks, which is investigated via the measurement of prompt $\mathrm{D_s^+}$ mesons and $\Lambda_\mathrm{c}^{+}$ baryons.