Quark Recombination

TL;DR

This paper reviews the quark recombination model for hadronization in high-energy nuclear collisions, emphasizing its success in explaining experimental data and exploring recent developments in heavy-flavor and quarkonium production.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of quark recombination, highlighting new insights into heavy-flavor and quarkonium hadronization in hot QCD matter, including recent signatures in small systems.

Findings

Recombination explains key experimental observables at RHIC and LHC.

Signatures of quark coalescence observed in $pp$ collisions at TeV energies.

Dynamical kinetic models offer detailed insights into quarkonium hadronization.

Abstract

Hadronization is a fundamental process occurring at a distance scale of about $1\,\rm fm \simeq \Lambda_{QCD}^{-1} $, hence within non-perturbative dynamics. In elementary collisions, like $e^+e^-$, $e^-p$, or $pp$, phenomenological approaches to hadronization have been developed based on vacuum-like dynamics that require the creation of quark-antiquark and/or diquark pairs during the hadronization process. In the 2000s, the idea was developed that in ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus (AA) collisions, which lead to the formation of a partonic medium with large (anti-)quark densities, hadronization can occur through the recombination of in-medium quarks, unlike the situation in $e^+e^-$, $e^-p$, and $pp$. We give an overview of the main features that characterize quark recombination and have enabled a description of several important experimental observables at both RHIC and LHC over the last two decades. We highlight some additional developments and open issues. We specifically discuss the impact of coalescence on the study of heavy-flavor hadronization, including recent developments showing signatures of (the onset of) quark coalescence even in $pp$ collisions at TeV energies. Furthermore, we highlight specific features of hadronization for quarkonium in AA collisions, where it has been possible to develop a dynamical kinetic approach that allows to extract more detailed information about the temperature dependence of the heavy-quark interaction in hot QCD matter.