Light Cone wavefunction approach to open heavy flavor dynamics in the QGP

Abstract

We elucidate the role of time scales that determine heavy quark dynamics in the QGP. Quark-antiquark potentials extracted from the lattice are used to demonstrate the existence of open heavy flavor bound-state solutions in the vicinity of the critical temperature, and their light cone wavefunctions are obtained. We use these wavefunctions to calculate the in-medium modification of the heavy quark distribution and decay probabilities. For the case of high p T D or B mesons traversing the QGP, we combine the new meson formation and dissociation mechanism with the traditional parton-level charm and beauty quark quenching to obtain predictions for the heavy meson and non-photonic electron suppression in Cu+Cu and Pb+Pb collisions at RHIC and the LHC, respectively.