Heavy quark scattering and quenching in a QCD medium at finite temperature and chemical potential

Abstract

The heavy quark collisional scattering on partons of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) is studied in a quantum chromodynamics medium at finite temperature and chemical potential. We evaluate the effects of finite parton masses and widths, finite temperature $T$, and quark chemical potential ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{q}$ on the different elastic cross sections for dynamical quasiparticles (on- and off-shell particles in the QGP medium as described by the dynamical quasiparticle model ``DQPM'') using the leading order Born diagrams. Our results show clearly the decrease of the $qQ$ and $gQ$ total elastic cross sections when the temperature and the quark chemical potential increase. These effects are amplified for finite ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{q}$ at temperatures lower than the corresponding critical temperature ${T}_{c}({\ensuremath{\mu}}_{q})$. Using these cross sections we, furthermore, estimate the energy loss and longitudinal and transverse momentum transfers of a heavy quark propagating in a finite temperature and chemical potential medium. Accordingly, we have shown that the transport properties of heavy quarks are sensitive to the temperature and chemical potential variations. Our results provide some basic ingredients for the study of charm physics in heavy-ion collisions at Beam Energy Scan at RHIC and CBM experiment at FAIR.