Heavy quarks at RHIC from parton transport theory
Abstract
There are several indications that an opaque partonic medium is created in energetic Au+Au collisions \sqrt{s} ~ 100 GeV/nucleon at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). At the extreme densities of ~ 10-100 times normal nuclear density reached even heavy-flavor hadrons are affected significantly. Heavy-quark observables are presented from the parton transport model MPC, focusing on the nuclear suppression pattern, azimuthal anisotropy ("elliptic flow"), and azimuthal correlations. Comparison with Au+Au data at top RHIC energy \sqrt{s} = 200 GeV indicates significant heavy quark rescattering, corresponding to roughly five times higher opacities than estimates based on leading-order perturbative QCD. We propose measurements of charm-anticharm, e.g., D-meson azimuthal correlations as a sensitive, independent probe to corroborate these findings.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.nucl-th/0608069,
title = {Heavy quarks at RHIC from parton transport theory},
author = {Denes Molnar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:nucl-th/0608069},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
Talk at Hot Quarks 2006, Int. Workshop, May 15-20, 2006, Villasimius, Sardinia, Italy. 6 pages, 8 EPS figures, EPJ stylefile