Collisional dissociation of heavy mesons in dense QCD matter

Abstract

In the framework of the reaction operator approach we calculate and resum the multiple elastic scattering of a fast $q\bar{q}$ system traversing dense nuclear matter. We derive the collisional broadening of the meson's transverse momentum and the distortion of its intrinsic light cone wave function. The medium-induced dissociation probability of heavy mesons is shown to be sensitive to the opacity of the quark-gluon plasma and the time dependence of its formation and evolution. We solve the system of coupled rate equations that describe the competition between the fragmentation of $c$- and $b$-quarks and the QGP-induced dissociation of the $D$- and $B$-mesons to evaluate the quenching of heavy hadrons in nucleus-nucleus collisions. In contrast to previous results on heavy quark modification, this approach predicts suppression of $B$-mesons comparable to that of $D$-mesons at transverse momenta as low as $p_T\sim 10$ GeV. It allows for an improved description of the large attenuation of non-photonic electrons in central Au+Au reactions at RHIC.

8 pages, 5 figures. Figures and references updated, typos corrected. As published in Phys.Lett.B

References in corpus (1)

• Measurement of high-p_T Single Electrons from Heavy-Flavor Decays in p+p Collisions at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV

Cited by in corpus (19)

• Thermal Dileptons at LHC
• Heavy-Quark Kinetics in the QGP at LHC
• A light-cone wavefunction approach to open heavy flavor dynamics in QCD matter
• Non-Abelian energy loss in cold nuclear matter
• A theory of jet shapes and cross sections: from hadrons to nuclei
• J/psi production at high transverse momentum in p+p and Cu+Cu collisions at \sNN=200GeV
• A systematic study of direct photon production in heavy ion collisions
• Formation and decay of hadronic resonances in the QGP
• A new correlation method to identify and separate charm and bottom production processes at RHIC
• On dissociation of heavy mesons in a hot quark-gluon plasma
• Effect of heavy-quark energy loss on the muon differential production cross section in Pb-Pb collisions at \sqrtsNN=5.5 TeV
• Soft Open Charm Production in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Overview of charm production at RHIC
• STAR Results on High Transverse Momentum, Heavy Flavor and Electromagnetic Probes
• Recent results from parton cascade and microscopic transport
• Nuclear modification factor of non-photonic electrons in heavy-ion collisions and the heavy-flavor baryon-to-meson ratio
• Future Experiments in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
• From RHIC to LHC
• 0th Order Heavy Quark Photon Bremsstrahlung