English

Thermalization of Heavy Quarks in the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Nuclear Theory 2010-04-06 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Experiment

Abstract

Charm- and bottom-quark rescattering in a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is investigated with the objective of assessing the approach towards thermalization. Employing a Fokker-Planck equation to approximate the collision integral of the Boltzmann equation we augment earlier studies based on perturbative parton cross sections by introducing resonant heavy-light quark interactions. The latter are motivated by recent QCD lattice calculations which indicate the presence of "hadronic" states in the QGP. We model these states by colorless (pseudo-) scalar and (axial-) vector D- and B-mesons within a heavy-quark effective theory framework. We find that the presence of these states at moderate QGP temperatures substantially accelerates the kinetic equilibration of c-quarks as compared to using perturbative interactions. We also comment on consequences for DD-meson observables in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.nucl-th/0412015,
  title  = {Thermalization of Heavy Quarks in the Quark-Gluon Plasma},
  author = {H. van Hees and R. Rapp},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:nucl-th/0412015},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

14 pages, 5 figures, v2: Added references, v2: Added further references, some typos corrected