Probing quark-gluon plasma with D mesons

Abstract

Heavy quarks are powerful tools for the study of the properties of the high-density QCD medium created in heavy-ion collisions as they are sensitive to the transport properties of the medium and may interact with the QCD matter differently from light quarks. As the main observables to study the medium effect, the D0 nuclear modification factor (RAA) provides insights into the flavor dependence of in-medium parton energy loss, and the D0 azimuthal anisotropy coefficient (Vn) provides information about the degree of the thermalization of the bulk medium. Furthermore, the production of D0 in jets is sensitive to the diffusion in the medium and the role of medium response. Using the large proton-proton and PbPb data samples at [square root of] SNN = 5.02 TeV collected by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), high precision measurements of Do have been performed.