Heavy-Quark Diffusion, Flow and Recombination at RHIC

Abstract

We discuss recent developments in assessing heavy-quark interaction in the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). While induced gluon radiation is expected to be the main energy-loss mechanism for fast-moving quarks, we focus on elastic scattering which prevails toward lower energies, evaluating both perturbative (gluon-exchange) and nonperturbative (resonance formation) interactions in the QGP. The latter are treated within an effective model for D- and B-meson resonances above T_c as motivated by current QCD lattice calculations. Pertinent diffusion and drag constants, following from a Fokker-Planck equation, are implemented into an expanding fireball model for Au-Au collisions at RHIC using relativistic Langevin simulations. Heavy quarks are hadronized in a combined fragmentation and coalescence framework, and resulting electron-decay spectra are compared to recent RHIC data. A reasonable description of both nuclear suppression factors and elliptic flow up to momenta of ~5 GeV supports the notion of a strongly interacting QGP created at RHIC. Consequences and further tests of the proposed resonance interactions are discussed.

8 pages, 14 figures, contribution to the proceedings for the "International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter 2006"

References in corpus (23)

• How Much do Heavy Quarks Thermalize in a Heavy Ion Collision?
• (Non)Thermal Aspects of Charmonium Production and a New Look at J/$\psi$ Suppression
• $J/\psi$ and ${\eta }_c$ in the Deconfined Plasma from Lattice QCD
• QCD Predictions for Charm and Bottom Production at RHIC
• Heavy-Quark Probes of the Quark-Gluon Plasma at RHIC
• Quark Coalescence for Charmed Mesons in Ultrarelativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Towards a Theory of Binary Bound States in the Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Thermalization of Heavy Quarks in the Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Energy Loss of Charm Quarks in the Quark-Gluon Plasma: Collisional vs Radiative
• Open charm yields in d+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{{}_{NN}}}=200$ GeV
• In-Medium Effects on Charmonium Production in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Charmonium Suppression and Regeneration from SPS to RHIC
• How sensitive are high-pt electron spectra at RHIC to heavy quark energy loss?
• Centrality Dependence of Charm Production from Single Electrons in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Momentum spectra of charmonium produced in a quark-gluon plasma
• Open Charm Production in an Equilibrating Parton Plasma
• Propagation of Charm Quarks in Equilibrating Quark Gluon Plasma
• Bottomonium Production at RHIC and LHC
• Hadronic Modes and Quark Properties in the Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Measurement of Single Electron Event Anisotropy in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Heavy-Quark Spectra at RHIC and Resonances in the QGP
• High-$p_T$ electron distributions in d+Au and p+p collisions at RHIC
• Effect of three-body elastic scattering on heavy quark momentum degradation in the quark-gluon plasma

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Thermal Dileptons at LHC
• Heavy-Quark Kinetics in the QGP at LHC
• Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC - Last Call for Predictions
• Gluon bremsstrahlung by heavy quarks - its effects on transport coefficients and equilibrium distribution
• Energy gain of heavy quarks by fluctuations in the QGP
• 3-loop 3PI effective action for 3D SU(3) QCD
• Correlations of Heavy Quarks Produced at Large Hadron Collider
• Charm hadron production in relativistic heavy ion collisions within a quark combination model
• Overview of charm production at RHIC
• Azimuthal correlations of D-mesons in $p$+$p$ and $p$+Pb collisions at LHC energies
• SQM 2006: Theory Summary and Perspectives
• Future Experiments in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
• Collective excitations in the hot QCD medium and the propagation of Heavy Quarks