Heavy flavors in heavy-ion collisions: quenching, flow and correlations

We present results for the quenching, elliptic flow and azimuthal correlations of heavy-flavor particles in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions obtained through the POWLANG transport setup, developed in the past to study the propagation of heavy quarks in the Quark–Gluon Plasma and here extended to include a modeling of their hadronization in the presence of a medium. Hadronization is described as occurring via the fragmentation of strings with endpoints given by the heavy (anti-) quark Q(Q¯)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$Q(\overline{Q})$$\end{document} and a thermal parton q¯(q)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\overline{q}(q)$$\end{document} from the medium. The flow of the light quarks is shown to affect significantly the RAA\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$R_\mathrm{AA}$$\end{document} and v2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$v_2$$\end{document} of the final D\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$D$$\end{document} mesons, leading to a better agreement with the experimental data. The approach allows also predictions for the angular correlation between heavy-flavor hadrons (or their decay electrons) and the charged particles produced in the fragmentation of the heavy-quark strings.