Recent studies on heavy-flavor femtoscopy in heavy-ion collisions by STAR

Abstract

At the initial stage of nuclear-nuclear collisions, heavy quarks are generated in hard partonic scatterings. This allows them to participate in the entire evolution of the heavy-ion collisions. During hadronization, different type of hadrons are produced including D mesons and light-flavoured hadrons, like pion ($\pi$), kaon ($K$), proton ($p$) etc. We can observe different interactions between these hadrons based on the size of collision systems. Such as, hadron re-scattering, suppression of charm quarks and collective effects are weak or missing in $p+p$ system in comparison to $Au+Au$ or $Pb+Pb$ collision system. Femtoscopy is one of the most significant and unique tools for examining the final state interaction behaviors between correlated pair of particles at low momentum in a pair rest frame. It is also possible to explore the size and geometry of emission source through the measurements of femtoscopic correlation functions. Here we report the studies of correlations between neutral charmed meson ($D^0$ / $\overline{D^0}$) and identified charged hadrons ($\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, $p^{\pm}$) in Au+Au collisions at STAR experiment using femtoscopy technique. This is the first measurement of heavy-flavor femtoscopy in heavy-ion collisions at 200 GeV. STAR results can provide valuable insights into the interactions between $D^{0}/\overline{D^0}$-$\pi^{\pm}$, $D^{0}/\overline{D^0}$-$K^{\pm}$ and $D^{0}/\overline{D^0}$-$p^{\pm}$ pairs during the hadronic phase. $D^0 (\overline{D^0})$ mesons are reconstructed via the $K^{\mp}-{\pi}^{\pm}$ decay channel using topological criteria enabled by the HFT (Heavy Flavor Tracker) detector with excellent track pointing resolution. These proceedings show a comparison study between STAR results and theory predictions using NLO-HMChPT (Next-to-Leading Order-Heavy Meson Chiral Perturbation Theory) scheme and associated physics implications.