https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-7312-4
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Diffusion of charm quarks in jets in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
1
Key Laboratory of Quark & Lepton Physics (MOE) and Institute of Particle Physics, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China
2
School of Mathematics and Physics, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China
* e-mail: bwzhang@mail.ccnu.edu.cn
Received:
22
June
2019
Accepted:
13
September
2019
Published online:
24
September
2019
The radial distribution of mesons in jets probes the diffusion of charm quark relative to the jet axis and provides a new perspective to study the interaction mechanisms between heavy quarks and the medium in the nucleus-nucleus collisions. The in-medium parton propagations are described by a Monte Carlo transport model which uses the next-to-leading order (NLO) plus parton shower (PS) event generator SHERPA as input and includes elastic (collisional) and inelastic (radiative) interaction for heavy quarks as well as light partons. At low
meson
, the radial distribution significantly shifts to larger radius indicating a strong diffusion effect which is consistent with the recent experimental data. We demonstrate that the angular deviation of charm quarks declines with
and is very sensitive to the collisional more than radiative interaction at
GeV. As predictions, we present the
meson radial distribution in jets in p + p and
Au + Au collisions at
GeV at the RHIC, and also estimate the nuclear modification factor of charm jet in central Au + Au collisions at 200 GeV at the RHIC and central Pb + Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV at the LHC.
© The Author(s), 2019