Heavy quark mass near the phase transition

TL;DR

This paper estimates the effective masses of charm and bottom quarks near the QCD phase transition temperature by comparing hadron gas and quark-gluon plasma models, revealing heavy quark masses much larger than their bare masses.

Contribution

It introduces a method to determine effective heavy quark masses at the phase transition using particle yield data and resonance gas models, highlighting their temperature and chemical potential dependence.

Findings

Charm quark mass at T_c is around 1.8 GeV, much heavier than the bare mass.

Effective quark masses decrease with increasing temperature above T_c.

Charm and bottom quark masses vary with baryon chemical potential, with charm mass increasing then decreasing, and anticharm decreasing continuously.

Abstract

Assuming that the number densities of heavy flavor in hadron gas and in QGP are same at $T_c$, we obtain the effective mass of heavy quark at $T_c$ from the comparison with the hadron resonance gas model which well describes particle yield in heavy-ion collisions. We find that charm quark mass at vanishing baryon chemical potential is around 1.8 GeV which is much heavier than QCD bare mass and close to $D$ meson mass. The mass slightly increases with increasing baryon chemical potential and then decreases. On the other hand, anticharm quark mass constantly decreases with increasing baryon chemical potential. Bottom quark mass has a similar pattern. Extending the hadron resonance gas model to a bit higher temperature beyond $T_c$, the effective masses of charm and bottom quarks decrease with increasing temperature.