Thermal relaxation of charm in hadronic matter Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • The thermal relaxation rate of open-charm (D) mesons in hot and dense hadronic matter is calculated using empirical elastic scattering amplitudes. D-meson interactions with thermal pions are approximated by D* resonances, while scattering off other hadrons (K, , , , K*, N, ) is evaluated using vacuum scattering amplitudes as available in the literature based on effective Lagrangians and constrained by realistic spectroscopy. The thermal relaxation time of D-mesons in a hot gas is found to be around 25-50 fm/. c for temperatures T=150-180 MeV, which reduces to 10-25 fm/. c in a hadron-resonance gas. The latter values, argued to be conservative estimates, imply significant modifications of D-meson spectra in heavy-ion collisions. Close to the critical temperature (Tc), the spatial diffusion coefficient (Ds) is surprisingly similar to recent calculations for charm quarks in the Quark-Gluon Plasma using non-perturbative T-matrix interactions. This suggests a possibly continuous minimum structure of Ds around Tc. 2011.

published proceedings

  • PHYSICS LETTERS B

author list (cited authors)

  • He, M., Fries, R. J., & Rapp, R.

citation count

  • 64

complete list of authors

  • He, Min||Fries, Rainer J||Rapp, Ralf

publication date

  • January 2011