Heavy quark energy loss and thermalization in hot and dense nuclear matter

Abstract

We study heavy quark energy loss and thermalization in hot and dense nuclear medium. The diffusion of heavy quarks is calculated via a Langevin equation, both for a static medium as well as for a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) medium generated by a (3+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic model. We investigate how the initial configuration of the QGP and its properties affect the final state spectra and elliptic flow of heavy flavor mesons and non-photonic electrons. It is observed that both the geometric anisotropy of the initial profile and the flow profile of the hydrodynamic medium play important roles in the heavy quark energy loss process and the development of elliptic flow. Within our definition of the thermalization criterion and for reasonable values of the diffusion constant, we observe thermalization times that are longer than the lifetime of the QGP phase.