Heavy-quark binary scattering in the quark-gluon plasma

I argue that the strong quenching and the sizable anisotropy of heavy quark flavors observed in heavy-ion collisions has a substantial component from binary scattering processes in the quark-gluon plasma. To arrive at this conclusion, I illustrate essential requirements for a more accurate theoretical description by considering first the average collisional energy loss of heavy quarks in a thermal background. On this basis, I describe a consistent transport approach, formulating the in-medium evolution of heavy quarks as a stochastic Markov process, which has been implemented for applications in heavy-ion phenomenology