Novel scenario for production of heavy flavored mesons in heavy ion collisions

Abstract

The observed strong suppression of heavy flavored hadrons produced with high pT, is caused by final state interactions with the created dense medium. Vacuum radiation of high-pT heavy quarks ceases at a short time scale, as is confirmed by pQCD calculations and by LEP measurements of the fragmentation functions of heavy quarks. Production of a heavy flavored hadrons in a dense medium is considerably delayed due to prompt breakup of the hadrons by the medium. This causes a strong suppression of the heavy quark yield because of the specific shape of the fragmentation function. The parameter-free description is in a good accord with available data.