Heavy and light flavor jet quenching in different collision systems at the LHC energies

Abstract

Recent experiments have observed large anisotropic collective flows in high multiplicity protonlead collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which indicates the possible formation of mini quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in small collision systems. However, no jet quenching has been confirmed in such small systems so far. To understand this intriguing result, the system size scan experiments have been proposed to bridge the gap between large and small systems. In this work, we perform a systematic study on both heavy and light flavor jet quenching in different collision systems at the LHC energies. Using our state-of-the-art jet quenching model, which combines the next-to-leadingorder perturbative QCD framework, a linear Boltzmann transport model and the (3+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics simulation, we provide a good description of nuclear modification factor RAA for charged hadrons and D mesons in central and mid-central Pb+Pb and Xe+Xe collisions measured by CMS collaboration. We further predict the transverse momentum and centrality dependences of RAA for charged hadrons, D and B mesons in Pb+Pb, Xe+Xe, Ar+Ar and O+O collisions at the LHC energies. Our numerical results show a clear system size dependence for both light and heavy flavor hadron RAA across different collision systems. Sizable jet quenching effect is obtained for both heavy and light flavor hadrons in central O+O collisions at the LHC energies. Our study provides a significant bridge for jet quenching from large to small systems, and should be helpful for finding the smallest QGP droplet and the disappearance of QGP in relativistic nuclear collisions.

Scaling behaviors of heavy flavor meson suppression and flow in different nuclear collision systems at the LHC

“…This would bridge the gap between large and small systems and may hopefully help identify the boundary across which QGP disappears. Along this direction, several theoretical efforts have been recently devoted to explore the nuclear modification effects on high p T hadrons in systems smaller than Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC energies [46][47][48][49], and how parton energy loss depends on the size of collision systems [50,51].…”

Perturbative and non-perturbative interactions between heavy quarks and quark-gluon plasma within a unified approach

“…While perturbative calculation has been successful in understanding heavy and light flavor jet quenching at high p T [14,44], it fails at low p T [45]. Effects of nonperturbative interactions become crucial in describing heavy flavor dynamics from low to intermediate p T region (p T 8 − 10 GeV).…”