Gluon contribution to open heavy-meson production in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

A sizable contribution to heavy quark production in high-energy hadronic and nuclear collisions comes from heavy quark-antiquark pair production from gluon splitting during the parton shower evolution. We investigate the effect of gluon-medium interaction on open heavy flavor spectra in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The interaction of hard gluons and heavy quarks with the hot QCD medium is simulated by utilizing a Langevin transport model that simultaneously incorporates contributions from collisional and radiative processes. It is found that while the gluon splitting channel has quite an important contribution to the single $D$ meson production cross section, its influence on the final heavy meson nuclear modification turns out to be quite modest because the average lifetime of hard gluons is short before splitting into heavy quark-antiquark pairs during the evolution and propagation of the parton shower.