https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-022-00785-9
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Probing the in-medium 
-broadening by 
+HF angular de-correlations
1
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nuclear Science, Institute of Quantum Matter, South China Normal University, 510006, Guangzhou, China
2
Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory of Quantum Matter, Southern Nuclear Science Computing Center, South China Normal University, 510006, Guangzhou, China
3
Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (MOE) and Institute of Particle Physics, Central China Normal University, 430079, Wuhan, China
4
School of Mathematics and Physics, China University of Geosciences, 430074, Wuhan, China
Received:
24
March
2022
Accepted:
1
July
2022
Published online:
25
July
2022
Angular correlations between vector boson and heavy flavors (HF) are potentially new effective tools to gain insight into the partonic interactions in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). In this paper, we present the theoretical study of the azimuthal angular de-correlations of 
HF in nucleus-nucleus collisions as a new probe of the in-medium -broadening effect. The initial production of 
HF in p + p is generated by SHERPA which matches the next-to-leading hard processes with parton shower. The in-medium heavy quark evolution is implemented by a Monte Carlo Langevin simulation, which takes into account the collisional and radiative energy loss. We observe considerable suppression at 
and enhancement at 
in D azimuthal angular distribution in 0–10% Pb + Pb collisions at 
TeV compared to the p + p baseline, which indicates evident in-medium -broadening of charm quarks. We also find that the overall modification patterns of D angular distribution are sensitive to the selection cut of D meson 
. Furthermore, by constructing the 2D (
) correlation diagram, it’s possible to display the respective impact of the two aspects of jet quenching, energy loss and -broadening, on the final-state D observable simultaneously. Additionally, we find weaker angular de-correlations of B compared to D which may be helpful to understand the mass hierarchy in heavy-ion collisions. Finally, the nuclear modification of 
distributions in central 0–10% Au + Au collisions at RHIC energy is provided for completeness.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022. corrected publication 2022. corrected publication 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
