Cracking the difference of estimating heavy quark transport coefficients in a Quark-Gluon Plasma

Abstract

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. Various microscopic models have successfully described many of the observables associated with its formation. Their transport coefficients differ, however, due to different assumptions about the underlying interaction of the heavy quarks with the plasma constituents, different initial geometries and formation times, different hadronization processes and a different time evolution of the QGP. In this study we present the transport coefficients of all these models and investigate systematically how some of these assumptions influence the heavy quark properties at the end of the QGP expansion. For this purpose we impose on these models the same initial condition and the same model for the QGP expansion and show that both have considerable influence on $R_{AA}$ and $v_2$.