Open charm phenomenology with a multi-stage approach to relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We study open charm flavor observables in Pb+Pb collision at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}= 2.76$ TeV within the MARTINI framework. The space-time expansion of the quark-gluon plasma is described using the hydrodynamical approach-MUSIC with IP-Glasma initial conditions. The model parameters, including the viscous coefficients, were obtained from a recent Bayesian model-to-data comparison. We evolve heavy quarks in this background using Langevin dynamics while incorporating their collisional and radiative processes in the medium. The sensitivity of charm observables to the IP-Glasma initial state, bulk evolution, and centrality of the collision is studied. We find that the elliptic flow of open charm flavor has a strong dependence on the fluctuating initial conditions in addition to the strength of the interaction of heavy quarks with the medium constituents. Within this framework, the nuclear suppression factor and elliptic flow of D-mesons act as efficient probes to study the initial stages of heavy-ion collisions, transport coefficients associated with QGP medium as well as heavy quark interactions.