Tests of the Quark-Gluon Plasma Coupling Strength at Early Times with Heavy Quarks

Abstract

The redistribution in momentum space of heavy quarks via their interactions in the quark-gluon plasma is an excellent probe of the heavy quark coupling strength to the medium. We utilize a Monte Carlo Langevin calculation for tracking heavy quark - antiquark pairs embedded in a viscous hydrodynamic space-time evolution. We find that the nuclear modification factor ($R_{AA}$) for charm quarks is relatively insensitive to the coupling to the quark-gluon plasma at early times where the highest temperatures are acheived. In contrast the azimuthal angular correlation of charm and anticharm quarks is extremely sensitive to the early time evolution. For beauty quarks the situation is reversed in terms of sensitivity. Future measurements of heavy quarks have the potential to map out the temperature dependence of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio (η/s).

5 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Energy Loss and Flow of Heavy Quarks in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Heavy quark dynamics and hadronization in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions: collisional versus radiative energy loss
• Influence of the shear viscosity of the quark-gluon plasma on elliptic flow in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions
• ${\mathbf{D}}_{\mathbf{s}}$-Meson as Quantitative Probe of Diffusion and Hadronization in Nuclear Collisions
• Hadron spectra and elliptic flow for 200 A GeV Au+Au collisions from viscous hydrodynamics coupled to a Boltzmann cascade
• Heavy Quark Diffusion with Relativistic Langevin Dynamics in the Quark-Gluon Fluid
• Relativistic Langevin Dynamics in Expanding Media
• D-Dbar Correlations as a sensitive probe for thermalization in high-energy nuclear collisions
• The effect of partonic wind on charm quark correlations in high-energy nuclear collisions
• Quark-Gluon Plasma at RHIC and the LHC: Perfect Fluid too Perfect?

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Particle spectra and HBT radii for simulated central nuclear collisions of C+C, Al+Al, Cu+Cu, Au+Au, and Pb+Pb from Sqrt(s)=62.4-2760 GeV
• Single electron yields from semileptonic charm and bottom hadron decays in Au$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV
• Production of open-charm mesons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Yield correlations and $p_T$ dependence of charm hadrons in Pb + Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76$ TeV
• Accelerated quantum circuit Monte-Carlo simulation for heavy quark thermalization
• Measurement of charm and bottom production from semileptonic hadron decays in $p$$+$$p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV
• Elliptic and triangular flows in dAu collisions at 200 GeV in the fusing color string model
• Charm- and Bottom-Quark Production in Au$+$Au Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}$ = 200 GeV
• Charm balance function in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Prompt production of D mesons with ALICE at the LHC