D-meson propagation in hot dense matter

Abstract

The drag force and diffusion coefficients for a D meson are calculated in hot dense matter composed of light mesons and baryons, such as it is formed in heavy-ion collisions. We use a unitarized approach based on effective models for the interaction of a D meson with hadrons, which are compatible with chiral and heavy quark symmetries. We study the propagation of the D meson in the hadron matter in two distinct cases. On the one hand, we analyze the propagation of D mesons in matter at vanishing baryochemical potential, which is relevant for high-energetic collisions at LHC or RHIC. On the other hand, we show the propagation of D mesons in the hadronic medium following isentropic trajectories, appropiate at FAIR and NICA heavy-ion experiments. We find a negligible baryon contribution to the transport coefficients at vanishing chemical potential. However at finite baryochemical potential we obtain a large correction to the transport coefficients with the inclusion of nucleons and Delta baryons. The relaxation time for D mesons is reduced a factor 2-3 in the later case, producing a more thermalized D meson-spectrum for FAIR physics than for the typical LHC energies. We finally present results for the spatial diffusion coefficient of a D meson in hadronic matter and the possible existence of a minimum near the phase transition to the quark-gluon plasma at zero and finite baryochemical potential.

17 pages, 11 figures. One reference added and several typos corrected. This version, which coincides with the published manuscript, includes the Delta baryon vacuum decay constant in the unitarization process. Results do not appreciably change with respect to the first version