Momentum dependence of drag coefficients and heavy flavour suppression in quark gluon plasma

Abstract

The momentum dependence of the drag coefficient of heavy quarks propagating through quark gluon plasma (QGP) has been evaluated. The results have been used to estimate the nuclear suppression factor of charm and bottom quarks in QGP. We observe that the momentum dependence of the transport coefficients plays crucial role in the suppression of the heavy quarks and consequently in discerning the properties of QGP using heavy flavours as a probe. We show that the large suppression of the heavy quarks observed at RHIC and LHC is predominantly due to the radiative losses. The suppression of $D^0$ in Pb+Pb collisions at LHC energy - recently measured by the ALICE collaboration has also been studied.