Heavy flavors in nucleus-nucleus and proton-nucleus collisions

Abstract

A multi-step setup for heavy-flavor studies in high-energy nucleus-nucleus (AA) and proton-nucleus (pA) collisions is presented. The propagation of the heavy quarks in the medium is described in a framework provided by the relativistic Langevin equation, here solved using weak-coupling transport coefficients. Successively, the heavy quarks hadronize in the medium. We compute the nuclear modification factor and the elliptic flow parameter of the final Dmesons both in AA and in pA collisions and compare our results to experimental data.