Open heavy-flavor observables at the LHC and the importance of higher-order flow harmonics

Abstract

Heavy-quark dynamics in the quark-gluon plasma provide information about the medium properties and the details of the heavy-quark-medium interaction. Traditional observables like the nuclear modification factor and the elliptic flow of D mesons have shown suppression at intermediate and high momenta and collective flow at low momenta. Thanks to the improving accuracy of the experimental data a combined analysis of these two observables starts to have discriminating power between different heavy-quark transport coefficients or features of the energy-loss models. In this overview, we summarize the modern strategy of describing heavy-quark dynamics and show how recent advances to include more differential observables such as azimuthal correlations and higher-order flow harmonics can help us understand the properties of heavy-flavor transport.