A comparative study of different approaches for heavy quark energy loss, based on the latest experimental data

TL;DR

This paper compares three methods for calculating heavy quark energy loss in Quark-Gluon Plasma, using the latest experimental data to evaluate their accuracy in describing charm quark suppression in high-energy collisions.

Contribution

It provides a systematic comparison of different theoretical approaches for heavy quark energy loss using a unified numerical framework and recent experimental data.

Findings

All models show varying degrees of agreement with experimental data.

The non-equilibrium initial state significantly affects energy loss calculations.

Some approaches better reproduce high $P_T$ suppression patterns.

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of three distinct methods used to calculate the collisional energy loss of heavy quarks in Quark-Gluon Plasma. The study focuses on the calculation of the nuclear suppression factor of charm quarks in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{S_{NN}} = 5.02$ TeV. All three models are examined using the same numerical evolution based on the well-known Fokker-Planck equation by considering critical phenomena like a non-equilibrium state at the onset of heavy ion collision. The outcomes of each approach are compared with the latest data from ALICE and ATLAS experiments spanning from 2018 to 2022. This study aims to compare the degree of agreement between each approach and recently obtained experimental data, in the intermediate and high $P_T$ regions.