Heavy quark potential and thermal charm production in heavy-ion collisions
Abstract
Abstract The effective mass of heavy quark in QGP is related to the heavy quark potential at a large distance. In this study we test different heavy quark potentials, namely, the screened potential such as the free energy and the internal energy of the heavy quark pair in QGP, and the unscreened potential, which was recently proposed by the HotQCD Collaboration, through the thermal production of charm quarks in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. We find that the free energy potential overestimates charm production in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC, while the unscreened potential produces results closest to the experimental data from the ALICE Collaboration among the three potentials.
Fields of Study & Subjects
High-Energy Particle Collisions Research
Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena
Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
Publication details
- Journal / source
- The European Physical Journal A
- Publisher
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC
- Volume
- 62
- Issue
- 1
- Publication date
- 19 January 2026
- Language
- EN