Charm dynamics in heavy-ion collisions
CERN
Heavy flavor observables provide valuable information on the properties of the
hot and dense Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions.
In this talk we review the heavy flavour dynamics in relativistic heavy-ion
collisions within the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach.
The charm and bottom quarks are produced through initial binary nucleon-nucleon
collisions taking into account the (anti-)shadowing effects.
During the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) phase, heavy quarks interact with off-shell
massive partons (quarks and gluons) and are hadronized into D and B mesons through
coalescence or fragmentation close to the critical energy density, and then interact
with hadrons in the final hadronic stage with scattering cross sections calculated
in an effective Lagrangian approach with heavy-quark spin symmetry.
We present the PHSD results on different heavy flavor observables (such as $R_{AA}$, $v_2$,
contribution to the dilepton spectra, correlations etc.) from RHIC BES to LHC
energies. Also we address the properties of charm quarks in thermal equilibrium
by transport coefficients which can be compared to lattice QCD data.