Speaker
Description
Heavy quarks are produced in hard scatterings at the very beginning of a heavy-ion collision. As a result, they experience all subsequent stages of the collision, and their dynamics are particularly sensitive to the properties of the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) phase. Recent studies have demonstrated that a fluid-dynamical description of heavy-quark transport in the QGP, combined with a realistic hadronization and freeze-out procedure, can reproduce experimental particle spectra with remarkable precision. While this success is widely acknowledged, its underlying reasons are not yet fully understood.
In this talk, I discuss the dynamics of heavy quarks in the QGP, focusing on their thermalization — or hydrodynamization — within the finite lifetime of the medium. I present signatures of thermalization, universal behavior, and (hydrodynamic) attractors that govern heavy-quark evolution even far from equilibrium.
