Heavy flavor at the large hadron collider in a strong coupling approach Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Employing nonperturbative transport coefficients for heavy-flavor (HF) diffusion through quark-gluon plasma (QGP), hadronization and hadronic matter, we compute D- and B-meson observables in Pb+Pb (s=2.76TeV) collisions at the LHC. Elastic heavy-quark scattering in the QGP is evaluated within a thermodynamic T-matrix approach, generating resonances close to the critical temperature which are utilized for recombination into D and B mesons, followed by hadronic diffusion using effective hadronic scattering amplitudes. The transport coefficients are implemented via Fokker-Planck Langevin dynamics within hydrodynamic simulations of the bulk medium in nuclear collisions. The hydro expansion is quantitatively constrained by transverse-momentum spectra and elliptic flow of light hadrons. Our approach thus incorporates the paradigm of a strongly coupled medium in both bulk and HF dynamics throughout the thermal evolution of the system. At low and intermediate p T, HF observables at LHC are reasonably well accounted for, while discrepancies at high p T are indicative for radiative mechanisms not included in our approach. 2014 The Authors.

published proceedings

  • PHYSICS LETTERS B

altmetric score

  • 0.5

author list (cited authors)

  • He, M., Fries, R. J., & Rapp, R.

citation count

  • 131

complete list of authors

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

publication date

  • January 2014