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1. Data-driven extraction of heavy quark diffusion in quark-gluon plasma

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8243-9  

   Li, Shuang; Liao, Jinfeng (July 2020, The European Physical Journal C)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Heavy quark production provides a unique probe of the quark-gluon plasma transport properties in heavy ion collisions. Experimental observables like the nuclear modification factor $$R_\mathrm{AA}$$ R AA and elliptic anisotropy $$v_\mathrm{2}$$ v 2 of heavy flavor mesons are sensitive to the heavy quark diffusion coefficient. There now exist an extensive set of such measurements, which allow a data-driven extraction of this coefficient. In this work, we make such an attempt within our recently developed heavy quark transport modeling framework (Langevin-transport with Gluon Radiation, LGR). A question of particular interest is the temperature dependence of the diffusion coefficient, for which we test a wide range of possibility and draw constraints by comparing relevant charm meson data with model results. We find that a relatively strong increase of diffusion coefficient from crossover temperature $$T_c$$ T c toward high temperature is preferred by data. We also make predictions for Bottom meson observables for further experimental tests. 

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2. Hydrodynamic description of D meson production in high-energy heavy-ion collisions *

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-1137/abf645  

   Ding, Chi; Ke, Wei-Yao; Pang, Long-Gang; Wang, Xin-Nian (July 2021, Chinese Physics C)

   Abstract The large values and constituent-quark-number scaling of the elliptic flow of low- D mesons imply that charm quarks, initially produced through hard processes, might be partially thermalized through strong interactions with quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. To quantify the degree of thermalization of low- charm quarks, we compare the meson spectra and elliptic flow from a hydrodynamic model to experimental data as well as transport model simulations. We use an effective charm chemical potential at the freeze-out temperature to account for the initial charm quark production from hard processes and assume that they are thermalized in the local comoving frame of the medium before freeze-out. mesons are sampled statistically from the freeze-out hyper-surface of the expanding QGP as described by the event-by-event (3+1)D viscous hydrodynamic model CLVisc. Both the hydrodynamic and transport models can describe the elliptic flow of mesons at GeV/ c as measured in Au+Au collisions at GeV. Though the experimental data on spectra are consistent with the hydrodynamic result at small GeV/ c , they deviate from the hydrodynamic model at high transverse momentum, GeV/ c . The diffusion and parton energy loss mechanisms in the transport model can describe the measured spectra reasonably well within the theoretical uncertainty. Our comparative study indicates that charm quarks only approach local thermal equilibrium at small , even though they acquire sizable elliptic flow comparable to light-quark hadrons at both small and intermediate . 

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3. Charm and bottom hadrons in hot hadronic matter

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2025.05.002  

   Das, Santosh K; Torres-Rincon, J; Rapp, R (May 2025, Physics reports)

   Heavy quarks, and the hadrons containing them, are excellent probes of the QCD medium formed in high-energy heavy-ion collisions, as they provide essential information on the transport properties of the medium and how quarks color-neutralize into hadrons. Large theoretical and phenomenological efforts have been dedicated thus far to assess the diffusion of charm and bottom quarks in the quark-gluon plasma and their subsequent hadronization into heavy-flavor (HF) hadrons. However, the fireball formed in heavy-ion collisions also features an extended hadronic phase, and therefore any quantitative analysis of experimental observables needs to account for the rescattering of charm and bottom hadrons. This is further reinforced by the presence of a QCD cross-over transition and the notion that the interaction strength is maximal in the vicinity of the pseudo-critical temperature. We review existing approaches for evaluating the interactions of open HF hadrons in a hadronic heat bath and the pertinent results for scattering amplitudes, spectral functions and transport coefficients. While most of the work to date has focused on 𝐷-mesons, we also discuss excited states as well as HF baryons and the bottom sector. Both the HF hadro-chemistry and bottom observables will play a key role in future experimental measurements. We also conduct a survey of transport calculations in heavy-ion collisions that have included effects of hadronic HF diffusion and assess its impact on various observables. 

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4. Bottom Hadrochemistry in High-Energy Hadronic Collisions

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.012301  

   He, Min; Rapp, Ralf (July 2023, Physical Review Letters)

   The hadrochemistry of bottom quarks (b) produced in hadronic collisions encodes valuable information on the mechanism of color neutralization in these reactions. Since the b-quark mass is much larger than the typical hadronic scale of 1 GeV, bbar pair production is expected to be well separated from subsequent hadronization processes. A significantly larger fraction of b baryons has been observed in proton-proton (pp) and proton-antiproton (pbarp) reactions relative to eþe2 collisions, challenging theoretical descriptions. We address this problem by employing a statistical hadronization approach with an augmented set of b-hadron states beyond currently measured ones, guided by the relativistic quark model and lattice-QCD computations. Assuming relative chemical equilibrium between different b-hadron yields, thermal densities are used as fragmentation weights of b quarks into various hadron species. With quark model estimates of the decay patterns of excited states, the fragmentation fractions of weakly decaying b hadrons are computed and found to agree with measurements in pbarp collisions at the Tevatron. By combining transverse-momentum (pT) distributions of b quarks from perturbative QCD with thermal weights and independent fragmentation toward high pT, a fair description of the pT-dependent B-meson ratios measured in pp collisions at the LHC is obtained. The observed enhancement of Lambda_b attributed to the feeddown from thus far unobserved excited b baryons. Finally, we implement the hadrochemistry into a strongly coupled transport approach for b quarks in heavy-ion collisions, utilizing previously determined b-quark transport coefficients in the quark-gluon plasma, to highlight the modifications of hadrochemistry and collective behavior of b hadrons in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC. 

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5. QLBT: a linear Boltzmann transport model for heavy quarks in a quark-gluon plasma of quasi-particles

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-10308-x  

   Liu, Feng-Lei; Xing, Wen-Jing; Wu, Xiang-Yu; Qin, Guang-You; Cao, Shanshan; Wang, Xin-Nian (April 2022, The European Physical Journal C)

   Abstract We develop a new heavy quark transport model, QLBT, to simulate the dynamical propagation of heavy quarks inside the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Our QLBT model is based on the linear Boltzmann transport (LBT) model with the ideal QGP replaced by a collection of quasi-particles to account for the non-perturbative interactions among quarks and gluons of the hot QGP. The thermal masses of quasi-particles are fitted to the equation of state from lattice QCD simulations using the Bayesian statistical analysis method. Combining QLBT with our advanced hybrid fragmentation-coalescence hadronization approach, we calculate the nuclear modification factor$$R_\mathrm {AA}$$ $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$and the elliptic flow$$v_2$$ $v_2$ofDmesons at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider. By comparing our QLBT calculation to the experimental data on theDmeson$$R_\mathrm {AA}$$ $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$and$$v_2$$ $v_2$, we extract the heavy quark transport parameter$$\hat{q}$$ $\hat{q}$and diffusion coefficient$$D_\mathrm {s}$$ $D_s$in the temperature range of$$1-4~T_\mathrm {c}$$ $1-4T_c$, and compare them with the lattice QCD results and other phenomenological studies. 

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