Modeling of heavy-flavor pair correlations in Au-Au collisions at 200 A GeV at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Abstract: We study the nuclear modification of angular and momentum correlations between heavy quark pairs in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. The evolution of heavy quarks inside the thermalized medium is described via a modified Langevin approach that incorporates both elastic and inelastic interactions with the medium constituents. The spacetime evolution of the fireball is obtained from a (2+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics simulation. The hadronization of heavy quarks is performed utilizing a hybrid model of fragmentation and coalescence. Our results show that the nuclear modification of the transverse momentum imbalance of D\bar{D} pairs reflects the total energy loss experienced by the heavy quarks and may help us probe specific regions of the medium. The angular correlation of heavy flavor pairs, especially in the low to intermediate transverse momentum regime, is sensitive to the detailed energy loss mechanism of heavy quarks inside the QGP.