Heavy flavor transport in the QGP medium

Abstract

I review recent developments on heavy flavor transport in the QGP medium, along two directions. The first is the transport of individual open heavy quarks. Leveraging the tools of heavy quark effective theory, recent work revealed a novel connection between the evolution equation of the heavy quark phase space distribution, the conditions for kinetic equilibration to take place, and a non-perturbatively defined expectation value of a Wilson loop characterized by the heavy quark velocity. Using these developments, I discuss results from a first exploration of the ensuing stopping and equilibration dynamics of heavy quarks in a strongly coupled environment. The second direction is the transport of quarkonia, bound states of heavy quarks, where novel Generalized Gluon Distributions have been recently defined and calculated in the framework of potential non-relativistic QCD. I discuss their application to the dynamics of quarkonium in heavy-ion collisions, highlighting the need to account for non-Markovian effects in the interactions between the heavy quark pair and quark-gluon plasma -- which have thus far resisted a systematic characterization.