Open and hidden charm in proton-nucleus and heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We review the collectivity and the suppression pattern of charmed mesons - produced in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at SPS (158 AGeV) and RHIC energies (21 ATeV) - in comparison to dynamical and thermal models. In particular, we examine the charmonium `melting' and the `comover dissociation' scenarios - implemented in a microscopic transport approach - in comparison to the available data from the SPS and RHIC. The analysis shows that the dynamics of c, c-bar quarks at RHIC are dominated by partonic or `pre-hadronic' interactions in the strongly coupled plasma stage. Both the `charmonium melting' and the hadronic `comover absorption and recreation model' are found, however, to be compatible with the experimental observation at SPS energies; the experimental ratio of Psi'/J/Psi versus centrality clearly favors the `hadronic comover' scenario. We find that the collective flow of charm in the purely hadronic Hadron-String Dynamics (HSD) transport appears compatible with the data at SPS energies, but substantially underestimates the data at top RHIC energies. Thus, the large elliptic flow v2 of D-mesons and the low R_AA(p_T) of J/Psi seen experimentally have to be attributed to early interactions of non-hadronic degrees of freedom. Simultaneously, we observe that non-hadronic interactions are mandatory in order to describe the narrowing of the J/Psi rapidity distribution from pp to central Au+Au collisions at the top RHIC energy. We demonstrate additionally that the strong quenching of low-pT J/Psi's in central Au+Au collisions indicates that a large fraction of final J/Psi mesons is created by a coalescence mechanism close to the phase boundary. Throughout this review we, furthermore, provide predictions for charm observables from Au+Au collisions at FAIR energies of 25-35 AGeV.