Eur. Phys. J. C (2020) 80: 671
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8243-9

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Data-driven extraction of heavy quark diffusion in quark-gluon plasma

¹ College of Science, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, 443002, China
² Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nuclear Science, Institute of Quantum Matter, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510006, China
³ Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (MOE), Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China
⁴ Physics Department and Center for Exploration of Energy and Matter, Indiana University, 2401 N Milo B. Sampson Lane, Bloomington, IN, 47408, USA

^* e-mail: liaoji@indiana.edu

Received: 1 April 2020
Accepted: 14 July 2020
Published online: 24 July 2020

Abstract

Heavy quark production provides a unique probe of the quark-gluon plasma transport properties in heavy ion collisions. Experimental observables like the nuclear modification factor and elliptic anisotropy of heavy flavor mesons are sensitive to the heavy quark diffusion coefficient. There now exist an extensive set of such measurements, which allow a data-driven extraction of this coefficient. In this work, we make such an attempt within our recently developed heavy quark transport modeling framework (Langevin-transport with Gluon Radiation, LGR). A question of particular interest is the temperature dependence of the diffusion coefficient, for which we test a wide range of possibility and draw constraints by comparing relevant charm meson data with model results. We find that a relatively strong increase of diffusion coefficient from crossover temperature toward high temperature is preferred by data. We also make predictions for Bottom meson observables for further experimental tests.