Heavy quark propagation in quark gluon plasma within a Boltzmann transport

approach
Francesco Scardinaa,b ,Santosh K. Dasa , Vincenzo Minissale a,b
,Salvatore Plumaria,b , Vincenzo Grecoa,b
a
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Catania,
Via S. Sofia 64, 1-95125 Catania, Italy and
b
Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, INFN-LNS, Via S. Sofia 62, I-95123 Catania, Italy
(Dated: June 24, 2017)
We describe the propagation of heavy quarks in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) by means of
a Boltzmann transport approach. Non-perturbative interaction between Heavy quarks and light
quarks have been taken into account through a quasi-particle approach in which light partons are
dressed with thermal masses. Such a model is able to describe the main features of non-perturbative
interaction which enhanced, the interaction strength, near Tc . The enhancement of the interaction
near Tc is the key ingredient for the simultaneous description of the experimental data for the
nuclear suppression factor, RAA, and the elliptic flow, v2 , both at RHIC and LHC energies.
The hadronization of heavy quark is described by mean of an hybrid model of fragmentation plus
coalescence. Our model shows a good description of data at RHIC and LHC for all the different
centralities. We have also used the Langevin dynamics to reproduced the experimental data on RAA .
We observed that the heavy quark drag coefficients are different within the Boltzmann transport
and Langevin approach, hence the spatial diffusion coefficient.
PACS: 25.75.-q; 24.85.+p; 05.20.Dd; 12.38.Mh

I. INTRODUCTION tween HQ and the medium which is substantially

The study of QCD matter under extreme condi-
tions of high temperatures is the primary purpose of
ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions which are be-
ing performed at the Relativistic Heavy-ion Collider
(RHIC) and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) .
The energy deposited during the collisions produce
a medium consisting of deconfinated quarks and glu-
ons that is called Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP)[1, 2].
This state of matter is characterized by a collective
behavior and has a small viscosity to entropy ratio.
An essential role to characterize the QGP can be
played by the hard probes created in the initial stage
of the collisions. Among them heavy quarks(HQ),
charm and bottom, in particular represents a very
promising probes since they travel through the ex-
panding medium interacting with the light parti-
cles but their number is expected to be conserved.
Therefore they can probe the whole evolution of the
QGP and because their large mass the do not ther-
malize with the bulk and thus they conserve memory
of the history of the plasma evolution [3].
Moreover HQ production can be calculated in next
to leading order and before the first experimental re-
sult it was expected that also their interaction with
the medium could be characterized by means of per-
turbative QCD which led to the expectations of a
small suppression of the spectra and a small elliptic
flow. However the first observations of non photonic
electrons coming from heavy quark decays measured
in Au+Au( sNN = 200 GeV) at RHIC [4–6] shown
a surprisingly small RAA and a quite large elliptic
flow v2 , indicating a quite strong interactions be-
beyond the expectations coming from perturbative
QCD. In order to reproduce the observed RAA a
k-factor which increases the magnitude of the in-
teraction is needed. These observations triggered
many studies in which non perturbative approach
have been implemented. One of this approach con-
sist in including non-perturbative contributions [7]
from the quasi-hadronic bound state with a subse-
quent hadronization by coalescence and fragmenta-
tion [8, 9]. One other approach make use of a a
pQCD framework supplemented by Hard Thermal
Loop (HTL) in order to evaluate realistic Debye
mass and running coupling constant [11, 47] and
also three-body scattering effects [44, 46] have been
implemented to improve the description of the data.
Another efficient way is to use a quasi-particle ap-
proach in which non perturabative effects are consid-
ered by introducing a thermal mass for the particle
of the bulk and evaluate the scattering matrix el-
ements related with the interactions between light
particles with thermal masses and heavy quarks. It
has been shown in Ref. [30] that the quasi parti-
cle approach is able to reproduce the lattice QCD
equation of state. Considering a non perturbative
interactions and including both collisional and ra-
diative process should allow one to reproduce the
RAA without any additional k-factor. Moreover the
non-perturbaitve effects are larger in the region of
low temperature, close to the critical temperature,
implying a larger interaction between HQ and the
bulk particles in the region of phase transitions. It
was thoroughly studied in Ref. [58] for heavy quarks
and also in [13, 14] for the light sector that an inter-
action increasing as the the temperature decreases

is one of the key ingredient to generate a larger el-
liptic flow and thus reducing the differences between
the RAA and v2 observed experimentally and the
theoretical predictions. However, such a strong in-
teraction near Tc does not affect the RAA which usu-
ally develop at the early stage of the evolution [58]
where the energy density is very high, hence, colli-
sion take place at larger rate. For this reason the
T-matrix approach discussed in [57] and the Quasi
particle approach discuss in [58] which manifest a
larger interaction at low tT goes in the direction of
reproducing the data.
In the present work we employ the quasi parti-
cle approach as discussed in ref. [58]. The main
difference in the present work with respect to the
results presented in [58] is the framework used to
describe the heavy quark propagation as well as the
hadronization mechanism. It is shown in [53] that a
non negligible difference arises between the Langevin
and the Boltzmann approach. In particular it has
been shown in [53] that the Boltzmann approach is
more efficient in reproducing the elliptic flow given
the same value for the RAA . In fact here we de-
scribe the propagation of HQ solving the full Boltz-
mann collision integral and employ a hybrid model
of fragmentation plus coalescence for heavy quark
hadronization. In one case, we have also shown
that one can describe the same experimental results
within the Langevin dynamics but with a different
drag coefficient.
The article is organized as follows. In section II
we discuss the Boltzmann transport equation and
the Quasi particle approach. In section III we de-
scribe the hybrid model of fragmentation and coales-
cence to consider the hadronization process of heavy
quarks into heavy flavor hadrons in QGP. Section
IV is devoted to the comparison between the nu-
merical results with experimental results at different
colliding energy and different centrality. In section
V we discuss the heavy quark transport coefficient
obtained within the present approach. Section V
contains the summary and conclusions.
II. DYNAMICAL EVOLUTION OF THE
BULK AND HEAVY QUARK
PROPAGATION
The evolution of the bulk, as well as, the propaga-
tion of the Heavy quarks is described by the Boltz-
mann equation
pµ ∂µ fi (x, p) = C[fi ](x, p) (1)
where the index i is for the flavor of the particles.
and C[fi ](x, p) is the collision term.
1 d3 p2 1 d3 p′1
Z Z
C[fi ] =
2E1 2E2 (2π)3 ν 2E1′ (2π)3
2
[fi (p′1 )fi (p′2 ) − fi (p1 )fi (p2 )]
|M(p1 p2 → p′1 p′2 )|2 × (2π)4
δ 4 (p1 + p2 − p′1 − p′2 ) , (2)
where M corresponds to the transition amplitude; ν
is set to 2 if one considers identical particles, other-
wise is set to 1. In order to solve the collision inte-
gral it is necessary to evaluate the scattering matrix
of the microscopical process. This is the approach
we use to describe the Heavy quark dynamics. To
describe the evolution of the bulk instead we have
developed an approach in which we fix the η/s and
we evaluate the cross-section [21–24]. In order to
get the cross section from the η/s we evaluate lo-
cally it using the Chapman-Enskok approximation
as described in [15]. In this way we are able to simu-
late the dynamical evolution of a fluid with specified
shear viscosity by means of the Boltzmann equation.
It may be mention that in our calculation the quarks
and gluons are massive in order to reproduce the
lattice QCD equation of state. Dynamically massive
particle provide the possibility to have a soften equa-
tion of state with a decreasing speed of sound when
the cross over region is approached. Within this ap-
proach we describe the evolution of a system that
dynamically has approximatively the lQCD equation
of state [26]. As shown in [25] within this approach
we recover universal features of hydrodynamics and
it permits to study the impact of η/s(T ) on observ-
ables like vn (pT ) in analogy to what is done within
hydrodynamical simulations [16–20].
In order to solve numerically the Boltzmann equa-
tion we use the test particle method to map the one
body distribution and we divide the space in a three-
dimensional grid. It is possible to show that from the
collision integral in eq. 2 it is possible to extract a
collision probability between the couple of particle
that are in the same cell of the grid. The expression
for the collision probability is indicate here
2→2
BE ∆Ncoll ∆t
P22 = = vrel σ22 3 . (3)
∆N1 ∆N2 ∆ x
where ∆3 x is the volume of the grid cells; ∆t is the
mesh time of the simulations, ∆N is the number of
particles inside a cell,vrel = s/2E1 E2 denotes the
relative velocity and s is Mandelstam variable rel-
ative to particles pair. In each cell of the grid the
collision probability between the couple of particle
inside the cell is evaluated and it is compared with
a random number extracted between 0 and 1. If
the random number is less than the collision prob-
ability the collision will occur and the momenta of
the particles after the collision is sampled accord-
ing to the differential cross section. This approach
reproduces the proper collisions rate. The Heavy
quarks interact with the bulk medium by means of
two-body collisions. In order to take into account

for non-perturbative effect the particles of the bulk
are dressed with thermal masses. The ingredient of
the Quasi particle model are the thermal masses and
a parametrized form of the strong coupling constant
g(T ) which is evaluated by making a fit of the en-
ergy density obtained by lattice QCD calculations
and can be parametrized as indicated in the follow-
ing equation.
2
48π
g 2 (T ) = h i2 .
TS
(11NC − 2Nf ) ln λ( TTC − TC )
Where Nc = Nf = 3, λ = 2.6 and Ts /Tc = 0.57 [30].
It has been shown in [30] that such an approach is
able to reproduce the lattice QCD equation of state.
III. HADRONIZATION VIA
COALESCENCE AND FRAGMENTATION
When the temperature of a cell drops below the
critical temperature that in this work has been fixed
to T=150 MeV than the collisions between the light
particles and the heavy quarks are stopped. In or-
der to deal with the hadronization mechanism we
consider a hybrid model of coalescence and frag-
mentation similar to that used for the hadroniza-
tion of light quarks in [9, 10, 27]. The second one is
the predominant hadronization mechanism for heavy
quark with high momentum transferred while at low
momenta the coalescence mechanism become pre-
dominant. Given the momentum distribution of the
heavy quarks obtained solving the Boltzmann equa-
tion the momentum distribution of D meson coming
from coalescence is obtained mixing the D meson ob-
tained via coalescence with those obtained via frag-
mentation. The contribution due to coalescence can
be evaluated as follows.
2 tion at t = τi and final heavy meson distribution at
d2 NH d3 pi
Z Y
= g H pi · dσi fqi (xi , pi )
dPT2 (2π)3 Ei
i=1
n
X
(2)
× fH (x1 ..xn , p1 ..pn ) δ PT − pT,i (5)
i=1
where dσi denotes an element of a space-like hyper-
surface, gH is the statistical factor to form a color-
less hadron from quark and antiquark with spin 1/2.
fqi are the quark (anti-quark) distribution in phase
space. fH is the Wigner function and describes the
spatial and momentum distribution of quarks in a
hadron. It depends in principle on the overlap of
the quark and anti-quark distribution functions with
the wave function of the meson as well as the inter-
actions of emitted virtual partons, which are needed
for balancing the energy and momentum, with the
partonic matter. Neglecting the off-shell effects the
3
coalescence probability function is then simply the
covariant hadron Wigner distribution function.
In the Greco-Ko-Levai (GKL) approach [10] for a
heavy meson the Wigner function is taken as a Gaus-
sian of radius ∆x in the coordinate and ∆p in the
momentum space, these two parameters are realted
by the uncertainty principle ∆x ∆p = 1,
fM (x1 , x2 ; p1 , p2 ) = 8 exp(x2r /(2∆2x ))
exp((p2r − ∆m212 )/(2∆2p ))(6)
(4)
where xr = x1 − x2 and pr = p1 − p2 are the quadri-
vectors for the relative coordinates and ∆m12 =
m1 − m2 is the scalar. The contribution due to frag-
mentation is instead evaluated convoluting the mo-
mentum of heavy quarks which do not undergone to
coalescence with the Peterson fragmentation func-
tion [72]
1
f (z) ∝ 1 ǫc 2 (7)
[z[1 − −
z 1−z ] ]
where z is the momentum fraction of the heavy me-
son fragmented from the heavy quark and ǫc is a
free parameter to fix the shape of the fragmenta-
tion function in comparison with the experimental
data on heavy meson production in p + p collisions.
ǫc = 0.006 for charm quarks at RHIC and ǫc = 0.02
for charm quarks at LHC.
IV. COMPARISON WITH THE
EXPERIMENTAL OBSERVABLES
We present in this section the comparison of the
results we get for the nuclear modification factor
RAA and for the elliptic flow v2 with the experi-
mental data . We calculate the nuclear suppression
factor, RAA , using our initial heavy meson distribu-
t = τf as:
! f (p, τf )
RAA (p) = . (8)
f (p, τi )
The anisotropic momentum distribution is calcu-
lated by means of the elliptic flow v2 :
* +
p2x − p2y
v2 = , (9)
p2T
We have √ carried out simulation of Au + Au colli-
sions at s = 200 AGeV. The initial conditions
for the bulk in the r-space are given by the stan-
dard Glauber condition, while in the p-space we use
a Boltzmann-Juttner distribution function up to a
transverse momentum pT = 2 GeV and at larger mo-
menta mini-jet distributions as calculated by pQCD
 4

2
at NLO order [9]. The initial maximum temperature 10
at the center of the fireball is T0 = 365 MeV and 0
D (ALICE)
1
the initial time for the simulations is τ0 = 0.6 fm/c 10
(corresponding to the τ0 · T0 ∼ 1 criteria). It may
0
be mention that in our calculation the quarks and 10
gluons are massive in order to reproduce the lattice

dσ/dp
-1
QCD equation of state. In the p-space the charm 10
quarks are distributed according to the Fixed Or- -2
der + Next-to-Leading Log (FONLL) calculations, 10
taken from Ref. [28, 29]. In the coordinate space -3
HQ are distributed according to number of binary 10
nucleon-nucleon collisions (Ncoll ). -4
10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
-1 pT (GeV)
10

-2
10 D (STAR) FIG. 2: pT distribution of D mesons, obtained from the
D
-3 fragmentation of charm quarks in p+p collisions, are
10
compared with the experimental data from the ALICE
dσ/d pTdy

-4 Collaboration. The experimental data has been taken

2

10 from Ref. [67].

-5
10

-6
10 1
10
+
-7 D (ALICE)
10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0
10
pT (GeV)
-1
10
dσ/dp

FIG. 1: pT distribution of D mesons, obtained from the -2

10
fragmentation of charm quarks in p+p collisions, are
compared with the experimental data from the STAR -3
Collaboration. The experimental data has been taken 10
from Ref. [66]. -4
10

In p+p collisions, we convoluted the charm quarks
distribution with the Peterson fragmentation func-
tion [72] to obtain the D meson spectra. As men-
tioned in eq. 7, the free parameter, ǫc , in the
fragmentation function has been fixed in compari-
son with the D meson production in p+p collisions
at RHIC energy. We use ǫc =0.006 for charm quarks
at RHIC. In Figs 1 we show the variation of D meson
spectra in p + p collisions obtained from our calcu-
lation and compare the result with the experimen-
tal data at RHIC energy. In Figs 2 we show the
variation of D meson spectra in p + p collisions at
LHC energy and compare with the experimental re-
sults. We use ǫc =0.02 for charm quarks at LHC.
In Figs 3 we show the variation of D+ meson spec-
tra in p + p collisions at LHC energy and compare
with the experimental results. Our results repro-
duce the experimental data on D meson production
in p + p collisions reasonably well both at RHIC and
LHC energies. With this initial conditions we pro-
ceed to evaluate the D mesons spectra in heavy-ion
collisions.
-5
10 0
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
pT (GeV)
FIG. 3: pT distribution of D mesons, obtained from the
fragmentation of charm quarks in p+p collisions, are
compared with the experimental data from the ALICE
Collaboration. The experimental data has been taken
from Ref. [67].
The dynamical evolution of the bulk is constrained
by an η/s = 1/4π, as discussed in section II, in
such way that the model reproduces the experimen-
tal data on the bulk spectra and elliptic flow. When
the system reaches locally the critical temperature
the one body distribution functions of heavy quark
are frozen and used to get the momentum distribu-
tion , the nuclear modification factor and the elliptic
flow, of the D mesons by means of the hadronization
model described in the previous section.

2 It is shown in ref. [53] that a non negligible dif-
1.8 STAR D (0-10%)
Boltzmann (Coal+Frag)
1.6 Boltzmann (Only Frag)
1.4 Lagevin (Only Frag)
1.2
RAA
1 the centralities 0 − 10% and compare the results ob-
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0 the hadronization mechanism and compare the re-
0 2 4 6 8
pT (GeV)
√ same RAA (pT ) within both the Langevin dynamics
FIG. 4: D meson RAA in Au + Au collisions at s =
200AGeV and centrality 0 − 10% compared to STAR
data. Experimental data has been taken from Ref [68].
In Fig. 4, the RAA √(pT ) as a function of pT in
Au+Au collisions at s = 200AGeV for centralities
0 − 10% that we obtained within our model calcula-
tion is depicted and compared with the experimental
data measured at RHIC energy [68]. In this figure we
indicate the impact of coalescence on RAA showing
the RAA we obtain considering only fragmentation
(dashed line) along with the results obtained includ-
ing the coalescence mechanism plus fragmentation
(black line). We observe that the coalescence implies
an increasing of the RAA for momenta larger than
1GeV thus a reduction of the suppression. This is
due to the hadronization mechanism which implies
that a D mesons obtained due to the results of the
coalescence of one light quark and a charm quark get
a smaller momentum with respect to the D mesons
obtained due to only fragmentation. This along with
the fact that charm spectrum decreases with pT im-
plies that the final spectrum of D meson does not
scale with the spectrum of the original charm and
an increasing in the number of particle in the region
of pT > 1GeV is observed. The impact of the co-
alescence decreases with the transverse momentum,
making the way for fragmentation as the dominant
mechanism of hadronization at high pT , because as
emergeres from Eq. 5 the probability of a HQ and a
light quarks to be in the phase space element defined
by the Wigner function decreases with the momen-
tum of HQ.
It may be mentioned here that the trend of the
experimental data at low pT support the fragmen-
tation plus coalescence as the mechanism of heavy
quark hadronization. Heavy quark hadronization
only fragmentation can not describes the low pT
bump of the experimental data.
5
ference arises between the Langevin and the Boltz-
mann approach to describes the HQ momentum evo-
lution QGP. In this present study, in one case, we
evaluate the the RAA (pT ) in Au + Au collisions at
√
s = 200AGeV within the Langevin dynamics for
tained within the Boltzmann transport approach.
For the details of the Langevin simulations of HQ
dynamics in QGP, we refer to Ref. [53, 58]. In Fig. 4
we show the variation of RAA (pT ) obtained within
the Langevin dynamics using only fragmentation as
sults obtained within the Boltzmann transport ap-
proach. As shown in Fig. 4, we can reproduce the
as well using Boltzmann transport approach. How-
ever, the drag coefficient needed to describe the same
RAA (pT ) within both the approach is very different.
STAR D (10-40%)
Frag+Coal
1.5 Frag
RAA(pT)
1
0.5
0
0 2 4 6 8
pT(GeV)
√
FIG. 5: D meson RAA in Au + Au collisions at s =
200AGeV and centrality 10 − 40% compared to STAR
data. Experimental data has been taken from Ref [68].
Using the same interaction, as of Fig. 4, within
Boltzmann transport approach, we proceed to com-
pare the results at different centrality class as well as
colliding energy. In Fig. 5, we shown the variation of
the RAA as a function of pT in Au + Au collisions at
√
s = 200AGeV for centralities 10 − 40% and com-
pared with the experimental data measured at RHIC
energy [68]. We show the results obtain within only
fragmentation and fragmentation plus coalescence.
In this centrality also we are getting reasonable well
agreement with the experimental data.
In Fig. 6 the results for the elliptic flow as a
function
√ of momentum in Au + Au collisions at
s = 200AGeV for centrality 0 − 80% are de-
picted. The different lines allow us to show the im-
pact of coalescence on the generation of the elliptic
flow. The black line indicates the elliptic flow we

0 only hadronization mechanism indicated by dashed
D STAR 0-80 %
0.2
Charm v2
Frag after Coal
Frag+Coal
0.15
Only Coal
Only Frag
v2(pT)
0.1
0.05
0 depends on the probability of finding a light quark
-0.05
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
pT [GeV]
FIG. 6: D meson elliptic flow in Au + Au collisions at
√
s = 200AGeV and centrality 20 − 30% compared to
STAR data. Experimental data has been taken from
Ref [69].
get for the charm quark,obtained within the trans-
port approach, without considering any hadroniza-
tion mechanism , while the dotted black line indi-
cates the v2 for D-mesons that we obtain considering
the fragmentation after coalescence as hadronization
mechanism. We observe that the v2 is similar in the
two cases with a little larger in the low momentum
for the D meson case. This is because the fragmen-
tation implies that the D-mesons v2 at a given trans-
verse momentum is the result of the fragmentation
of a charm quark v2 with a slightly larger transverse
momentum. In this case it is a kind of shift of the
charm quark v2 .
If coalescence plus fragmentation mechanism is in-
cluded for the hadronization, the v2 of the D-mesons
increases with respect to the elliptic flow of charm
quarks. This is because the D meson is the re-
sult of the coalescence of a charm quark and a light
quark and thus the D mesons anisotropy in momen-
tum space reflect both heavy quark and light quark
anisotropies in momentum space and since the light
quark elliptic flow is higher with respect to charm
quark elliptic flow so is the elliptic flow of D mesons
formed via coalescence. The v2 obtained due to co-
alescence plus fragmentation is shown in the solid
green line. The solid red line shows the v2 of D
mesons produced only via coalescence. As expected,
the v2 developed only coalescence is larger than the
v2 developed due to coalescence plus fragmentation.
The solid magenta line indicates the elliptic flow pro-
duced by the fragmentation of charm which have
not been selected to form D mesons through coales-
cence. In this case the elliptic flow is smaller with
respect to that obtained when fragmentation is the
6
double dotted line.
This result is an indirect consequences of the
phase space selection implicit in the coalescence
mechanism. In fact a charm quark will couple with
a light quark to form a D meson if the momenta
of the two particle are similar (if they are in the
same phase space element). Therefore the coales-
cence probability for a HQ with a given momentum
with the same momentum. Since the probability of
finding a light quark with a given momentum in not
isotropic in the transverse plane, as explicitly indi-
cated by the non zero elliptic flow, thus also the coa-
lescence probability is not isotropic in the transverse
momentum plane. Thus the ensemble formed with
all the HQ undergoing to coalescence has a differ-
ent momentum distribution in the transverse plane
with respect to the ensemble formed with the HQ
not undergoing to coalescence. Therefore this two
ensembles have different elliptic flows, with the el-
liptic flow of the first ensemble being more similar
to that of light quark and thus larger than the v2 of
ensemble formed with HQ which do not undergone
to coalescence. In the case, the charm quark do not
undergone to coalescence, the elliptic flow has to be
smaller than the elliptic flow calculated for all the
charm quarks. This is the reason why the v2 is small
for D mesons fragmented after coalescence than the
D meson formed due to only fragmentation.
0.5
RHIC b=8
LHC b=9
0.4
0.3
PCoal
c -----> D meson coalescence
0.2
0.1
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
pT (GeV)
FIG. 7: Coalescence probability as a function of trans-
verse momentum at RHIC and LHC.
In Fig. 7 the probability of a charm hadronize
through coalescence is depicted as a function of
pT . The charm quark hadronization probability to
all hadron is set to 1 at zero momentum. The
hadronization probability decreases with momentum
as the coalescence probability involves the product
of two distribution functions. We found at LHC en-
ergy the coalescence probability is little smaller than
 7

RHIC due to the harder charm quark distribution at 2

LHC than RHIC. 1.8 Frag+Coal
Only Frag
1.6
2
1.4
1.8 Frag+Coal
Only Frag 1.2

RAA (pT)
1.6 Pb-Pb @ 2.76 TeV 30-50%
1
1.4
0.8
1.2
Pb-Pb @ 2.76 TeV 0-10%
0.6
RAA

1
0.4
0.8
0.2
0.6
0
0.4 0 2 4 6 8 10
pT (GeV)
0.2
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 √
pT (GeV) FIG. 9: D meson RAA in P b + P b collisions at s =
2.76AT ev and centrality 30 − 50% compared to ALICE
data. Experimental data has been taken from Ref [70].
√
FIG. 8: D meson RAA in P b + P b collisions at s =
2.76AT ev and centrality 0 − 20% compared to ALICE
data. Experimental data has been taken from Ref [70].

D-ALICE (30-50%)
Using the same drag coefficient as in RHIC, we 0.25 Charm quark
Only Coal.
have√ carried out simulation of P b + P b collisions Frag after Coal.
at s = 2.76 ATeV for centralities 0 − 10% and 0.2 Frag+Coll
Only Frag
30 − 50%. In this case the initial maximum tem-
v2 (pT)

perature in the center of the fireball is T0 = 490 0.15

MeV and the initial time for the simulations is
τ0 ∼ 1/T0 = 0.3 fm/c. In Figs. 8 the results for the
RAA at 0 − 10% centrality are depicted with only
fragmentation and fragmentation plus coalescence.
In LHC, as of RHIC, we observe that the coales-
cence implies an increasing of the RAA for momenta
larger than 1GeV . As evident, the effect of coales-
cence is less significant at LHC energy than RHIC
energy. This is because effect of coalescence depends
on the slope of the charm quark momentum distri-
bution. For a harder charm quark distribution the
gain in momentum reflects in a smaller increase of
the slope, instead if the charm quark distribution
decreases fast in momentum then the same momen-
tum gain due to coalescence will result in a stronger
increase of the spectrum. For a hard charm quark
distribution, which is the case at LHC energy (in
contrast to RHIC),the impact of coalescence will be
less pronounce.
In Figs. 9 we present the variation of RAA with
respect to pT at 30 − 50%. In Figs. 10 we show
the variation of v2 corresponding to the same cen-
trality class, 30 − 50%. As expected coalescence in-
crease both the RAA and v2 and bring the results
close to the data, towards a simultaneous descrip-
tion of heavy meson RAA and v2 . At LHC energy
also, the v2 is small for D mesons fragmented after
coalescence than the D meson produced due to only
fragmentation.
0.1
0.05
Pb+Pb @ 2.76 AGeV 30-50%
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
pT (GeV)
FIG. 10: D meson elliptic flow in P b + P b collisions at
√
s = 2.76AT ev and centrality 30 − 50% compared to
ALICE data. Experimental data has been taken from
Ref [71].
It may be mentioned that at RHIC energy, con-
sidering coalescence plus fragmentation as the charm
quark hadronization, the D meson get about 35-40%
of v2 from the light partons as a consequence of coa-
lescence. But still the major part of the D meson v2
(about 60-65%) is coming from the heavy quark dif-
fusion within QGP (heavy quark-bulk interaction).
On the other at LHC energy the D meson get about
20-25% v2 from the light partons as a consequence of
coalescence where as about 75-80% is coming from
the heavy quark diffusion within QGP (heavy quark-
bulk interaction).
 8

0.5
V. HEAVY QUARK TRANSPORT
COEFFICIENTS IN QGP QPM (T=300 MeV, BM)
0.4 QPM (T=160 MeV, BM)
pQCD(T=300 MeV)
pQCD(T=160 MeV)
1 0.3

γ [fm ]
-1
QPM (BM)
QPM (LV) p=100 MeV
0.8 0.2
pQCD

0.6 0.1
γ [fm ]
-1

0.4 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
p [GeV]
0.2

0 FIG. 12: Drag coefficients as a function of momentum

0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5 obtained within the Boltzmann transport approach to
T [GeV]
describe the experimental data (shown in Fig 4).

FIG. 11: Drag coefficients as a function of temperature

obtained within the Boltzmann transport approach and
Langevin dynamics to describe the same experimental the momentum dependence of the drag coefficients
data (shown in Fig 4). is stronger in case of QPM than the pQCD. Strong
momentum dependence of the drag coefficient is a
indication of non-perturabative nature of the bulk-
In Fig. 11 we show the variation of the drag co- heavy quark interaction.
efficients with temperature needed to describe the
same RAA (pT ), as the experiment, within both the D-meson [TAMU]
AdS/CFT
Langevin dynamics as well using Boltzmann trans- QPM (Catania) - LV
port approach. We observe that, as pointed in 100 QPM (Catania) - BM
T-matrix - (LV)
ref [53] , we need a smaller drag coefficient in PHSD
Langevin dynamics to describe the same experimen-
(2πT)Ds

LO pQCD, αs=0.4
tal results than the Boltzmann transport approach. )
, α s(T
The differences in the drag coefficient in both the QCD
LO p fm/c
τ th ≈ 4-5
approach is about 30-35%. However, for bottom
10
quark Langevin and Boltzmann transport approach τ th≈ 3 fm
/c

give the same results [53]. This indicates the Brow-

nian approximation is not a good approximation for
charm quark or in other work one can parametrized
all the momentum transfer in terms of drag and dif-
fusion coefficients and need to go beyond it. In the
same figure we have also highlighted the drag coeffi-
cient obtained from the LO pQCD with temperature
dependence running coupling. This will give us an
indication how much enhancement of the drag coef-
ficient is needed, over the LO pQCD, to describe the
experiment data. We notice a weak a temperature
dependence of the drag coefficient in case of QPM
case than the pQCD which is one of the key ingre-
dient for a simultaneous description of heavy quark
RAA (pT ) and v2 [58].
In Fig. 12 we show the variation of the drag co-
efficients with momentum needed to describe the
RAA (pT ), as the experiment, within both the Boltz-
mann transport approach at two different temper-
ature. In the same figure, for the sake of compar-
ison, we also display the drag coefficients obtained
within pQCD. We observe, apart from magnitude,
τth≈ 1 fm/c
0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6 2 2.4
T/Tc
FIG. 13: Spatial diffusion coefficient as a function of tem-
perature obtained within the Boltzmann transport ap-
proach and Langevin dynamics to describe experimental
data, along with the results from lattice QCD. We have
also shown the results obtained within other models.
In Fig. 13, we show the variation of the spatial dif-
fusion coefficient [57, 74], Dx , obtained within both
the Langevin and Boltzmann transport approach to
describe the experimental data and compare the re-
sults with the lattice QCD results as well as the re-
sults obtained from different model calculations. We
have shown two different Dx corresponding to two
different drag coefficients obtained within Langevin
and Boltzmann transport approach. The results ob-

tained within LO pQCD for constant coupling is
shown in solid black line which is independent of
temperature. If one replace the constant coupling
with a running coupling then only one can intro-
duce a week temperature dependence. In the same
plot, we have also shown the results for D meson in
the hadronic phase. We find that our results also
supports a continuous evolution of spatial diffusion
coefficients from QGP to hadronic medium with a
minimum around Tc . Now onward we present the
results at different centrality and colliding energy
within the Boltzmann transport approach only.
It may be mention that our Dx is marginally be-
low the lattice QCD data point near Tc . But the
results will improved if we include initial state fluc-
tuation [24, 73] which help to develop a large sup-
pression than the smooth one, although the effect
is quiet nominal. In other words, with initial state
fluctuation one can describe the same RAA with a
smaller drag coefficient, hence, a smaller Dx . As
shown in Ref. [77], the pre-equilibrium phase may
effect the heavy quark suppression, hence, the Dx
for a better agreement with the lattice data point.
However, the manuscript is beyond the scope of the
initial state fluctuation and pre-equilibrium phase
effect, although the effect will be nominal. These
aspects will be investigated in our future work.
VI. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
We have studied the heavy quark propagation in
QGP at RHIC and LHC within a Boltzmann trans-
port approach. We start with a well constrain heavy
quark initialization which describe the D meson pro-
ductions in p + p collisions reasonable well both at
RHIC and LHC energies. For the bulk evolution
we use a transport bulk which can describe some
of the bulk properties like the spectra and bulk v2 .
The heavy quark and the bulk interaction has been
taken in to account within a QPM which can able
to reproduce the lattice QCD equation of state. The
hadronization of heavy quark is described by mean
of a hybrid model of fragmentation plus coalescence.
Using the same interaction we have calculated the
RAA and v2 of heavy meson at different centrality
class as well as different colliding energies. We com-
pare the results obtained within our model with the
experimental data both at RHIC and LHC energy
at different centrality class. Our model able to give
a simulations description of heavy meson RAA and
v2 both at RHIC and LHC reasonable well.
In this present study the key factor responsible for
a simultaneous description of of heavy meson RAA
9
and v2 is guided by the implementation of i) QPM
model for the heavy quark bulk interaction, ii) the
hadronization by mean of a hybrid model of frag-
mentation plus coalescence and iii) the Boltzmann
transport approach for the heavy quark momentum
evolution. QPM enhanced the heavy quark bulk in-
teraction near Tc which is the key ingredient to de-
velop large v2 [58] to describe the experiment data.
It may be mentioned that the temperature depen-
dence of the drag coefficient is weak in QPM than
the pQCD where as the momentum dependence of
drag coefficient is strong in QPM than the pQCD.
These non-perturbative nature of QPM help to build
up large v2 as of the experiment. Implementation
of heavy quark hadronization by mean of a hybrid
model of fragmentation plus coalescence help to in-
crease both the RAA and v2 close to the data. It is
shown in ref. [53] that the Boltzmann approach is
more efficient in reproducing the elliptic even at the
same RAA . This is mainly due to the slow evolu-
tion in the Boltzmann transport approach over the
Langevin dynamics. In fact, in this present study we
have show that within a Langevin dynamics we need
a smaller drag coefficient than the Boltzmann trans-
port approach. This is the motivation behind the
implementation of Boltzmann transport approach
over the Langevin dynamics which develop large v2 .
It may be mentioned here that the hadronic
rescattering, while generally not affecting RAA , give
a further contribution to D meson v2 that is in the
range of 10-20% [74] depending on the Tc assumed
that is generally in the range 155−175 MeV. Consid-
ering the fact that we use Tc =155 MeV, our results
may not affect significantly by the hadronic rescat-
tering. The calculations may be improved by includ-
ing heavy quark radiative loss. Inclusion of radiative
loss will help to improve the description of the ex-
perimental data at high pT as well as it will reduce
the K factor. But radiative loss may not affect our
results at low pT considering the fact that in QPM
the light quark and gluons are massive, hence the ra-
diation will be suppressed in the low pT . However,
we are intended to address these aspects in future
efforts.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the support by the ERC StG un-
der the QGPDyn Grant n. 259684.

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