Published June 2005 | Version v1
Journal article

How much do heavy quarks thermalize in a heavy ion collision?

  • 1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11764 (United States)
  • 2. Department of Physics, McGill University, 3600 rue University, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 2T8 (Canada)

Description

We investigate the thermalization of charm quarks in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. To this end, we calculate the diffusion coefficient in the perturbative quark gluon plasma and relate it to collisional energy loss and momentum broadening. We then use these transport properties to formulate a Langevin model for the evolution of the heavy quark spectrum in the hot medium. The model is strictly valid in the nonrelativistic limit and for all velocities γv<αs-1/2 to leading logarithm in T/mD. The corresponding Fokker-Planck equation can be solved analytically for a Bjorken expansion and the solution gives a simple estimate for the medium modifications of the heavy quark spectrum as a function of the diffusion coefficient. Finally we solve the Langevin equations numerically in a hydrodynamic simulation of the heavy-ion reaction. The results of this simulation are the medium modifications of the charm spectrum RAA and the expected elliptic flow v2(pT) as a function of the diffusion coefficient

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review. C, Nuclear Physics
Journal Volume
71
Journal Issue
6
Journal Page Range
p. 064904-064904.19
ISSN
0556-2813
CODEN
PRVCAN

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2005 The American Physical Society