Elastic and radiative heavy quark interactions in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

Elastic and radiative heavy quark interactions with light partons are studied with the partonic transport model named the Boltzmann approach to multiparton scatterings (BAMPSs). After calculating the cross section of radiative processes for finite masses in the improved Gunion–Bertsch approximation and verifying this calculation by comparing to the exact result, we study elastic and radiative heavy quark energy loss in a static medium of quarks and gluons. Furthermore, the full 3 + 1D space–time evolution of gluons, light quarks, and heavy quarks in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at the BNL Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are calculated with BAMPS including elastic and radiative heavy flavor interactions. Treating light and heavy particles on the same footing in the same framework, we find that the experimentally measured nuclear modification factor of charged hadrons and D mesons at the LHC can be simultaneously described. In addition, we calculate the heavy flavor evolution with an improved screening procedure from hard-thermal-loop calculations and confront the results with experimental data of the nuclear modification factor and the elliptic flow of heavy flavor particles at the RHIC and the LHC.