Heavy flavours in AA collisions: production, transport and final spectra

Understand

A multi-step setup for heavy-flavour studies in high-energy nucleus-nucleus (AA) collisions --- addressing within a comprehensive framework the initial Q-Qbar production, the propagation in the hot medium until decoupling and the final hadronization and decays --- is presented.

• The initial hard production of Q-Qbar pairs is simulated using the POWHEG pQCD event generator, interfaced with the PYTHIA parton shower.
• Outcomes of the calculations are compared to experimental data in pp collisions and are used as a validated benchmark for the study of medium effects.
• In the AA case, the propagation of the heavy quarks in the medium is described in a framework provided by the relativistic Langevin equation.