Open heavy-flavor transport and hadronization in heavy-ion collisions

¹ Department of Physics, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0305, USA
² Department of Physics and Astronomy and Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3366, USA
³ Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (MOE) & Institute of Particle Physics, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China

^* e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Published online: 17 April 2026

Abstract

We develop a comprehensive model for heavy-quark evolution in a realistic QGP, from their production in the initial collision to hadronic freeze-out. Heavy-quark transport is described by a Langevin approach including medium-induced radiation, coupled to a 2+1D viscous hydrodynamic bulk evolution. Transport coefficients are obtained from non-perturbative T-matrix calculations with resonant correlations near the transition temperature. Hadronization is implemented via two fragmentation+recombination schemes: an improved sudden coalescence model and a resonance recombination model. We present results for key open heavy-flavor observables, i.e., the nuclear modification factor and elliptic flow, and compare to LHC Pb-Pb data at √s_NN = 5.02 TeV.