Open charm mesons at nonzero temperature: results in the hadronic phase from lattice QCD

Abstract

We study what happens to D and D_s mesons as the temperature increases, using lattice QCD simulations with N_f=2+1 dynamical flavours on anistropic lattices. We have access to five temperatures in the hadronic phase. Using the determined groundstate mass at the lowest temperature, we investigate the effect of rising temperature by analysing ratios of mesonic correlators, without the need for further fitting or spectral reconstruction. In the pseudoscalar and vector channels, we demonstrate that temperature effects are at the percent level and can be captured by a reduction of the groundstate mass as the thermal crossover is approached. In the axial-vector and scalar channels on the other hand, temperature effects are prominent throughout the hadronic phase.