Charm transport and hadronization in Pb-Pb collisions with ALICE

About

In the ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a state of matter, called quark-gluon plasma (QGP), is created. Measurements of the production of charm hadrons and leptons from c,b-hadron decays in nucleus--nucleus collisions are therefore useful to study the properties of the in-medium charm-quark energy loss via the comparison with theoretical calculations.

Models describing the heavy-flavour transport and energy loss in an hydrodynamically expanding medium require also a precise modelling of the heavy-quark hadronisation in heavy-ion collisions, which is investigated via the measurement of prompt charm mesons and baryons.

The measurements of the production and ratios of prompt D mesons, including D$^{+}_{\rm{s}}$, and $\Lambda^{+}_{\rm{c}}$ baryons that use the 2018 Pb-Pb at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}} = 5.02$ TeV data sample will be presented. The prompt D$^{0}$ yield is reported down to $p_{\rm{T}}=0$ and charm hadron ratios are compared with results from pp collisions. In addition, the measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of strange and non-strange D mesons is discussed. The second harmonic coefficient provides information about the degree of thermalisation of the charm quark in the medium, while the third one is sensitive to event-by-event fluctuations in the initial stage of the collision.

Finally, a systematic comparison of experimental measurements with model calculations will be discussed in order to disentangle different model contributions and provide important constraints to the charm-quark diffusion coefficient $D_{s}$ in the QGP. .

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