Effect of Partonic “Wind” on Charm Quark Correlations in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

In high-energy collisions, massive heavy quarks are produced back to back initially and they are sensitive to early dynamical conditions. The strong collective partonic wind from the fast expanding quark-gluon plasma created in high-energy nuclear collisions modifies the correlation pattern significantly. While the hot and dense medium in collisions at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (sqrt[_s{NN}]=200 GeV) can only smear the initial back-to-back D_D correlation, a clear and strong near side D_D correlation is expected at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (sqrt[_s{NN}]=5500 GeV). This is considered as a signature for the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma.