Speaker
Dr
Marlene Nahrgang
Description
The observation of strong jet quenching and the suppression of high-$p_t$
hadrons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions are striking experimental
signatures for the formation of a deconfined QCD plasma in which partons
suffer from medium-induced energy loss. In particular, heavy quarks are
considered as suitable probes for revealing the properties of the produced
matter as they are created at very early stages in hard scattering
processes and assumed not to thermalize completely within the medium.
Typical observables for the interaction of heavy quarks with the medium
constituents are the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ and the elliptic
flow $v_2$, which we present within a combined Monte-Carlo approach and
realistic fluid dynamic description of the expanding plasma for both RHIC
and LHC energies. In the main part of this talk we will investigate the
potential of correlations between heavy quarks and anti-quarks to reveal
basic principles of energy loss scenarios at LHC. At low $p_t$ any
correlation of the initially heavy quark-antiquark pair is lost due to
thermalization, at larger $p_t$, however, these correlations in $p_t$ and
azimuthal angle $\phi$ survive and show distinctive features for purely
elastic and elastic plus radiative energy loss mechanisms. We discuss
these results in view of the core-corona effect and the centrality
dependence.
