Heavy Quark Pair Energy Correlators: From Profiling Partonic Splittings to Probing Heavy-Flavor Fragmentation

Abstract

We introduce heavy-flavor energy correlators, $\langle \Psi |\mathcal{E}_{\mathcal{H}}(\vec{n}_1) \mathcal{E}_{\mathcal{H}}(\vec{n}_2)|\Psi \rangle$, as a powerful observable for profiling partonic splittings and characterizing heavy-flavor fragmentation. We present its collinear factorization, perform resummation, and demonstrate the angular distribution's sensitivity to both the heavy-quark pair splitting and their subsequent fragmentation. We then apply the heavy-flavor EEC to probe medium-induced effects, revealing its sensitivity to medium modifications to heavy-quark pair splitting functions and to the medium's spatial structure.