Towards the understanding of heavy quarks hadronization: from leptonic to heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current understanding of heavy quark hadronization across different collision systems, highlighting experimental and theoretical insights from electron-positron to heavy-ion collisions and discussing future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of heavy-flavour hadronization processes, comparing experimental data with models across various collision environments.

Findings

Heavy-flavour measurements vary across collision systems.

Model predictions show partial agreement with experimental data.

Future experiments can better probe hadronization mechanisms.

Abstract

The formation of hadrons is a fundamental process in nature that can be investigated at particle colliders. As several recent findings demonstrate, with $\mathrm{e^+e^-}$ collisions as a "vacuum-like" reference at one extreme, and central nucleus--nucleus as a dense, extended-size system characterized by flow and local equilibrium at the opposite extreme, different collision systems offer a lever arm that can be exploited to probe with a range of heavy-flavour hadron species the onset of various hadronization processes. In this review, we present an overview of the theoretical and experimental developments. The focus is on open-heavy-flavour measurements. The comparison with model predictions and connections among the results in electron-positron, proton--proton, proton--nucleus, nucleus--nucleus collisions are discussed. After reviewing the current state, we suggest some prospects and future developments.