Observable sensitivity to evolution of charm quark in the early phases of relativistic heavy-ion collisions

23 Jun 2026, 19:40
20m
Garland 064

Garland 064

Poster presentation Poster session

Speaker

Mayank Singh (Vanderbilt University)

Description

Heavy quarks are predominantly produced in the initial hard scatterings of relativistic heavy-ion collisions and therefore have direct access to the early stages of the collision event. We study the sensitivity of open heavy-flavor observables to the pre-equilibrium stage of the medium evolution in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02$ TeV. The space-time evolution of the bulk medium is modeled using the IP-Glasma+MUSIC+UrQMD framework, which provides a realistic description from the earliest times through the hadronic phase. Charm quarks are initialized using PYTHIA and their in-medium propagation is simulated via Langevin dynamics implemented within the MARTINI framework [1]. While substantial momentum broadening of charm quarks is observed during the earliest stages of the collision, we find that the resulting D-meson $R_{AA}$, $v_2$ and angular correlations exhibit only a weak sensitivity to pre-equilibrium interactions. Our results suggest that the late-time medium effects dominate the observed heavy-flavor suppression and anisotropic flow. We review the elements that lead us to this conclusion.

  1. M. Singh, M. Kurian, B. Schenke, S. Jeon, and C. Gale, arXiv:2509.18647
Is this an experimental talk? No
Is this on behalf of a collaboration? No
Are you willing to present as a poster if it is not selected for oral presentation? Yes

Authors

Mayank Singh (Vanderbilt University) Manu Kurian (IIT (ISM) Dhanbad) Bjoern Schenke (Brookhaven National Lab) Sangyong Jeon Prof. Charles Gale

Presentation materials