Heavy Quark Transport Coefficients Research Articles

Constraining the equation of state with heavy quarks in the quasi-particle model of QCD matter

In a quasi-particle model of QCD matter at finite temperature with thermal masses for quarks and gluons from hard thermal loops, the equation of state (EOS) can be described by an effective temperature dependence of the strong coupling g(T). Assuming the same effective coupling between the exchanged gluon and thermal partons, the EOS can also be related to parton energy loss. Based on the quasi-particle linear Boltzmann transport (QLBT) model coupled to a (3+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamic model of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) evolution and a hybrid fragmentation-coalescence model for heavy quark hadronization, we perform a Bayesian analysis of the experimental data on D meson suppression RAA and anisotropy v2 at RHIC and the LHC. We achieve a simultaneous constraint on the QGP EOS and the heavy quark transport coefficient, both consistent with the lattice QCD results.

Event-shape engineering analysis of D meson in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions

We describe the propagation of charm quarks in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) by means of an event-by-event transport approach. In our calculations the non-perturbative interaction between heavy quarks and light partons has been taken into account through a quasi-particle approach with thermal light quark masses tuned to reproduce lQCD thermodynamics. We found that the flow observables v_2 and v_3 of D mesons are comparable with the experimental measurements for Pb + Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV in different ranges of centrality selections. The results are analyzed with event-shape engineering technique. The comparison of the anisotropic flow coefficients v_n with experimental data show a quite good agreement with experimental data for different flow vector q_2 selections, which confirms the strong coupling between charm quarks and light quarks in the QCD matter. Furthermore, we present here a novel study of the event-by-event correlations between flow harmonics of D mesons and soft hadrons at LHC energy with the event-shape engineering technique that can put further constraints on heavy quark transport coefficients toward a solid comparison between the phenomenological determination and the lattice QCD calculations.

Drag of heavy quarks in an anisotropic QCD medium beyond the static limit

Heavy quark dynamics in an anisotropic QCD medium have been analyzed within the Fokker-Planck approach. Heavy quark drag force and the momentum diffusion tensor have been decomposed by employing a general tensor basis for an anisotropic medium. Depending upon the relative orientation of the direction of the momentum anisotropy of the medium and heavy quark motion, two drag and four diffusion coefficients have been estimated in the anisotropic QCD medium. The relative significance of different components of drag and momentum diffusion coefficients has been explored. The dependence of the angle between the anisotropic vector and heavy quark motion to the drag and diffusion coefficients has also been studied. Furthermore, the energy loss of heavy quarks due to the elastic collisional process in an anisotropic medium has been studied. It is seen that the anisotropic contributions to heavy quark transport coefficients and its collisional energy loss have a strong dependence on the direction and strength of momentum anisotropy in the QCD medium.

Charming charm, beautiful bottom and quark–gluon plasma in the Large Hadron Collider era

After a few microseconds of the creation of our Universe through the Big Bang, the primordial matter was believed to be a soup of the fundamental constituents of matter -- quarks and gluons. This is expected to be created in the laboratory by colliding heavy nuclei at ultra-relativistic speeds. A plasma of quarks and gluons, called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) can be created at the energy and luminosity frontiers in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York, USA, and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. Heavy quarks, namely the charm and bottom quarks, are considered as novel probes to characterize QGP, and hence the produced Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) matter. Heavy quark transport coefficients play a significant role in understanding the properties of QGP. Experimental measurements of nuclear suppression factor and elliptic flow can constrain the heavy quark transport coefficients, which are key ingredients for phenomenological studies, and they help to disentangle different energy loss mechanisms. We give a general perspective of the heavy quark drag and diffusion coefficients in QGP and discuss their potentials as probes to disentangle different hadronization mechanisms, as well as to probe the initial electromagnetic fields produced in non-central heavy-ion collisions. Experimental perspectives on future measurements are discussed with special emphasis on heavy-flavors as next-generation probes in view of new technological developments.

Heavy quark transport coefficients in a viscous QCD medium with collisional and radiative processes

The heavy quark drag and momentum diffusion coefficients in the presence of both the collisional and radiative processes have been studied in a hot viscous QCD medium. The thermal medium effects are incorporated by employing the effective fugacity quasiparticle model based on the lattice QCD equation of state. Viscous effects are embedded into the heavy quark transport through the near-equilibrium distribution functions of the constituent medium particles of the quark-gluon plasma. The viscous corrections to the momentum distributions have been estimated from the effective Boltzmann equation. The effect of shear viscous correction to drag and diffusion is investigated by considering the soft gluon radiation by heavy quarks along with the elastic collisional processes of the heavy quark with the light quarks and gluons within the QGP medium. The momentum and temperature dependence of the heavy quark transport coefficients are seen to be sensitive to the viscous coefficient of the QGP for the collisional and radiative processes. The collisional and radiative energy loss of the heavy quark in the viscous quark-gluon plasma has also been explored.

Heavy quark transport in an anisotropic hot QCD medium: Collisional and radiative processes

The impact of momentum anisotropy on the heavy quark transport coefficients due to collisional and radiative processes in the QCD medium has been studied within the ambit of kinetic theory. Anisotropic aspects (momentum) are incorporated into the heavy quark dynamics through the non-equilibrium momentum distribution function of quarks, antiquarks, and gluons. These non-equilibrium distribution functions that encode the physics of momentum anisotropy and turbulent chromo-fields have been obtained by solving the ensemble-averaged diffusive Vlasov-Boltzmann equation. The momentum dependence of heavy quark transport coefficients in the medium is seen to be sensitive to the strength of the anisotropy for both collisional and radiative processes. In addition, the collisional and radiative energy loss of the heavy quark in the anisotropic hot QCD medium have been analyzed. The effects of anisotropy on the drag and diffusion coefficients are observed to have a visible impact on the nuclear suppression factor both at the RHIC and LHC.

Quantifying heavy quark transport coefficients with an improved transport model

The heavy-flavor transport coefficients contain important information on the strong interaction at finite temperatures. The extraction of these numbers from experimental data requires dynamical modeling of heavy-flavor transport that is coupled to realistic medium evolution. Furthermore, meaningful extractions necessitate both a faithful implementation of the physical inputs to be tested and the quantification of model uncertainty. For these purposes, we have developed a partonic transport model LIDO [1, 2]. It has an improved treatment of in-medium parton bremsstrahlung, which has been calibrated to theoretical calculations in a simple medium to reduce modeling uncertainty. Regarding the interaction between heavy quark and the medium, few-body perturbative scatterings are applied to large-momentum transfer (q) processes, while a diffusion equation models the dynamics of small-q processes. Such a separation restricts the explicit use of medium quasi-particles to large-q processes only. Another advantage is that deviations from the leading-order probe-medium coupling can be parametrized as an additional contribution to the diffusion constant.The heavy quark transport coefficients are then extracted with uncertainty estimation from a Bayesian analysis including both the RHIC and the LHC data. The results are found to be consistent with earlier extraction of the light-quark transport coefficients at high momentum and be comparable with lattice calculations of the heavy-flavor diffusion constant in the static limit at low momentum.

Charm quark dynamics in quark-gluon plasma with 3 + 1D viscous hydrodynamics

The drag and diffusion coefficients are studied within the framework of Fokker-Planck dynamics for the case of a charm quark propagating in an expanding quark-gluon plasma. The space-time evolution of the nuclear matter created in the relativistic heavy-ion collision is modelled using MUSIC, a 3+1 D relativistic viscous hydrodynamic approach. The effect of viscous corrections to the heavy quark transport coefficients is explored by considering scattering processes with thermal quarks and gluons in the medium. It is observed that the momentum diffusion of the heavy quarks is sensitive to the shear and bulk viscosity to entropy ratios. The collisional energy loss of the charm quark in the viscous quark-gluon plasma is analyzed.

Nonperturbative effects on radiative energy loss of heavy quarks

The radiative energy loss of fast partons traveling through the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is commonly studied within perturbative QCD (pQCD). Nonperturbative (NP) effects, which are expected to become important near the critical temperature, have been much less investigated. Here, we utilize a recently developed T -matrix approach to incorporate NP effects for gluon emission off heavy quarks propagating through the QGP. We set up four cases that contain, starting from a Born diagram calculation with color- Coulomb interaction, an increasing level of NP components, by subsequently including (remnants of ) confining interactions, resummation in the heavy-light scattering amplitude, and off-shell spectral functions for both heavy and light partons. For each case we compute the power spectra of the emitted gluons, heavy-quark transport coefficients (drag and transverse-momentum broadening, hat{q} ), and the path-length dependent energy loss within a “QGP brick” at fixed temperature. Investigating the differences in these quantities between the four cases illustrates how NP mechanisms affect gluon radiation processes. While the baseline perturbative processes experience a strong suppression of soft radiation due to thermal masses of the emitted gluons, confining interactions, ladder resummations and broad spectral functions (re-)generate a large enhancement toward low momenta and low temperatures. For example, for a 10 GeV charm quark at 200 MeV temperature, they enhance the transport coefficients by up to a factor of 10, while the results smoothly converge to perturbative results at sufficiently hard scales.

Heavy - light flavor correlations of anisotropic flows at LHC energies within event-by-event transport approach

The heavy quarks (HQs) are a unique probe of the hot QCD matter properties and their dynamics are coupled to the locally thermalized expanding quark gluon plasma. We present here a novel study of the event by event correlations between light and heavy flavor flow harmonics at LHC energy within a transport approach. Interaction between heavy quarks and light quarks have been taken into account to explore the impact of different temperature dependence for transport coefficients Ds and Γ. Our study indicates that vnheavy−vnlight correlation and the relative fluctuations of anisotropic flows, σvn/〈vn〉, are novel observables to understand the heavy quark-bulk interaction and are sensitive to the temperature dependence even to moderate differences of Ds(T), or Γ(T). Hence, the comparison of such new HQ observables to upcoming experimental data at both RHIC and LHC energies can put further constraints on heavy quark transport coefficients and in particular on its temperature dependence toward a solid comparison between phenomenological determination and lattice QCD calculations.

Heavy quark transport in a viscous semi-QGP

We study the effect of shear and bulk viscosities on the heavy quark transport coefficient within the matrix model of semi QGP. Dissipative effects are incorporated through the first-order viscous correction in the quark/antiquark and gluon distribution function. It is observed that while the shear viscosity effects reduces the drag of heavy quark the bulk viscosity effects increase the drag and the diffusion coefficients of heavy quark. For finite values of {\eta}/s and {\xi}/s, Polyakov loop further decreases the drag and the diffusion coefficients as compared to perturbative QCD.

Toward the determination of heavy-quark transport coefficients in quark-gluon plasma

Several transport models have been employed in recent years to analyze heavy-flavor meson spectra in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Heavy-quark transport coefficients extracted from these models with their default parameters vary, however, by up to a factor of 5 at high momenta. To investigate the origin of this large theoretical uncertainty, a systematic comparison of heavy-quark transport coefficients is carried out between various transport models. Within a common scheme devised for the nuclear modification factor of charm quarks in a brick medium of a quark-gluon plasma, the systematic uncertainty of the extracted drag coefficient among these models is shown to be reduced to a factor of 2, which can be viewed as the smallest intrinsic systematical error band achievable at present time. This indicates the importance of a realistic hydrodynamic evolution constrained by bulk hadron spectra and of heavy-quark hadronization for understanding the final heavy-flavor hadron spectra and extracting heavy-quark drag coefficient. The transverse transport coefficient is less constrained due to the influence of the underlying mechanism for heavy-quark medium interaction. Additional constraints on transport models such as energy loss fluctuation and transverse-momentum broadening can further reduce theoretical uncertainties in the extracted transport coefficients.

Resolving discrepancies in the estimation of heavy quark transport coefficients in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Heavy flavor observables provide valuable information on the properties of the hot and dense Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions. Various microscopic models have successfully described many of the observables associated with its formation. Their transport coefficients differ, however, due to different assumptions about the underlying interaction of the heavy quarks with the plasma constituents, different initial geometries and formation times, different hadronization processes and a different time evolution of the QGP. In this study we present the transport coefficients of all these models and investigate systematically how some of these assumptions influence the heavy quark properties at the end of the QGP expansion. For this purpose we impose on these models the same initial condition and the same model for the QGP expansion and show that both have considerable influence on $R_{AA}$ and $v_2$.

Drag force on heavy quarks and spatial string tension

Heavy quark transport coefficients in a strongly coupled Quark–Gluon Plasma can be evaluated using a gauge/string duality and lattice QCD. Via this duality, one can argue that for low momenta the drag coefficient for heavy quarks is proportional to the spatial string tension. Such a tension is well-studied on the lattice that allows one to straightforwardly make non-perturbative estimates of the heavy quark diffusion coefficients near the critical point. The obtained results are consistent with those in the literature.

A data-driven analysis of the heavy quark transport coefficient

Using a Bayesian model-to-data analysis, we estimate the temperature dependence of the heavy quark diffusion coefficients by calibrating to the experimental data of D-meson RAA and v2 in AuAu collisions (sNN=200 GeV) and PbPb collisions (sNN=2.76 TeV) [G. Xie [STAR Collaboration], Nucl. Phys. A 956, 473 (2016); A. Andronic et al., Eur. Phys. J. C 76, no. 3, 107 (2016)]. The spatial diffusion coefficient Ds2πT is found to be mostly constraint around (1.3−1.5)Tc and is compatible with lattice QCD calculations. We demonstrate the capability of our improved Langevin model to simultaneously describe the RAA and v2 at both RHIC and the LHC energies, as well as the feasibility to apply a Bayesian analysis to quantitatively study the heavy flavor transport in heavy-ion collisions.

Data-driven analysis of the temperature dependence of the heavy-quark transport coefficient

By applying a Bayesian model-to-data comparison, our improved Langevin transport model simultaneously describes the D-meson nuclear modification factor RAA and elliptic flow v2 in heavy-ion collisions at both RHIC and LHC energies on an event-by-event basis. We extract the diffusion coefficients of charm quarks in a quark-gluon plasma medium and find the resulting spatial diffusion coefficient Ds is compatible with lattice QCD calculations.

T-Matrix Approach to Strongly Coupled QGP

Based on a thermodynamic T-matrix approach we extract the potential V between two static charges in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) from ts to the pertinent lattice-QCD free energy. With suitable relativistic corrections we utilize this new potential to compute heavy-quark transport coefficients and compare the results to previous calculations using either F or U as potential. We then discuss a generalization of the T-matrix re-summation to a “matrix log” re-summation of t-channel diagrams for the grand partition function of the QGP in the Luttinger-Ward skeleton diagram formalism. With V as a non-perturbative driving kernel in the light-parton sector, we obtain the QGP equation of state from ts to lattice-QCD data. The resulting light-parton spectral functions are characterized by large thermal widths at small momenta, indicating the dissolution of quasi-particles in a strongly coupled QGP.

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

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.

An in-medium heavy-quark potential from the [formula omitted] free energy

We investigate the problem of extracting a static potential between a quark and its antiquark in a quark–gluon plasma (QGP) from lattice-QCD computations of the singlet free energy, FQQ¯(r). We utilize the thermodynamic T-matrix formalism to calculate the free energy from an underlying potential ansatz resummed in ladder approximation. Imaginary parts of both QQ¯ potential-type and single-quark self-energies are included as estimated from earlier results of the T-matrix approach. We find that the imaginary parts, and in particular their (low-)energy dependence, induce marked deviations of the (real part of the) potential from the calculated free energy. When fitting lattice results of the latter, the extracted potential is characterized by significant long-range contributions from remnants of the confining force. We briefly discuss consequences of this feature for the heavy-quark transport coefficient in the QGP.

Transport coefficients of heavy quarks aroundTcat finite quark chemical potential

The interactions of heavy quarks with the partonic environment at finite temperature $T$ and finite quark chemical potential $\mu_q$ are investigated in terms of transport coefficients within the Dynamical Quasi-Particle model (DQPM) designed to reproduce the lattice-QCD results (including the partonic equation of state) in thermodynamic equilibrium. These results are confronted with those of nuclear many-body calculations close to the critical temperature $T_c$. The hadronic and partonic spatial diffusion coefficients join smoothly and show a pronounced minimum around $T_c$, at $\mu_q=0$ as well as at finite $\mu_q$. Close and above $T_c$ its absolute value matches the lQCD calculations for $\mu_q=0$. The smooth transition of the heavy quark transport coefficients from the hadronic to the partonic medium corresponds to a cross over in line with lattice calculations, and differs substantially from perturbative QCD (pQCD) calculations which show a large discontinuity at $T_c$. This indicates that in the vicinity of $T_c$ dynamically dressed massive partons and not massless pQCD partons are the effective degrees-of-freedom in the quark-gluon plasma.