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 by utilizing a hybrid model of fragmentation and coalescence. Our results show that the nuclear modification of the transverse momentum imbalance of DD¯ 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 quark-gluon plasma.

A linearized Boltzmann transport (LBT) model coupled with hydrodynamical background is established to describe the evolution of jet shower partons and medium excitations in high energy heavy-ion collisions. We extend the LBT model to include both elastic and inelastic processes for light and heavy partons in the quark-gluon plasma. A hybrid model of fragmentation and coalescence is developed for the hadronization of heavy quarks. Within this framework, we investigate how heavy flavor observables depend on various ingredients, such as different energy loss and hadronization mechanisms, the momentum and temperature dependences of the transport coefficients, and the radial flow of the expanding fireball. Our model calculations show good descriptions of the D meson suppression and elliptic flow observed at the Larege Hadron Collider and the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider. The prediction for the Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=5.02 TeV is provided.

We revisit radiative parton energy loss in deeply inelastic scattering (DIS) off a large nucleus within the perturbative QCD approach. We calculate the gluon radiation spectra induced by double parton scattering in DIS without collinear expansion in the transverse momentum of initial gluons as in the original high-twist approach. The final radiative gluon spectrum can be expressed in terms of the convolution of hard partonic parts and unintegrated or transverse momentum dependent (TMD) quark-gluon correlations. The TMD quark-gluon correlation can be factorized approximately as a product of initial quark distribution and TMD gluon distribution which can be used to define the generalized or TMD jet transport coefficient. Under the static scattering center and soft radiative gluon approximation, we recover the result by Gylassy-Levai-Vitev in the first order of the opacity expansion. The difference as a result of the soft radiative gluon approximation is investigated numerically under the static scattering center approximation.

The Linear Boltzmann Transport (LBT) model coupled to hydrodynamical background is extended to include transport of both light partons and heavy quarks through the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. The LBT model includes both elastic and inelastic medium-interaction of both primary jet shower partons and thermal recoil partons within perturbative QCD (pQCD). It is shown to simultaneously describe the experimental data on heavy and light flavor hadron suppression in high-energy heavy-ion collisions for different centralities at RHIC and LHC energies. More detailed investigations within the LBT model illustrate the importance of both initial parton spectra and the shapes of fragmentation functions on the difference between the nuclear modifications of light and heavy flavor hadrons. The dependence of the jet quenching parameter qˆ on medium temperature and jet flavor is quantitatively extracted.

A sizable contribution to heavy-quark production in high-energy hadronic and nuclear collisions comes from heavy quark-antiquark pair production from gluon splitting during the parton shower evolution. We investigate the effect of gluon-medium interaction on open heavy flavor spectra in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. The interaction of hard gluons and heavy quarks with the hot QCD medium is simulated by utilizing a Langevin transport model that simultaneously incorporates contributions from collisional and radiative processes. It is found that, while the gluon splitting channel has quite an important contribution to the single D-meson production cross section, its influence on the final heavy-meson nuclear modification turns out to be quite modest because the average lifetime of hard gluons is short before splitting into heavy-quark-antiquark pairs during the evolution and propagation of the parton shower.

In a quasi-particle model of QCD matter at finite temperature with thermal masses for quarks and gluons from hard thermal loops, the equation of state (EOS) can be described by an effective temperature dependence of the strong coupling g(T). Assuming the same effective coupling between the exchanged gluon and thermal partons, the EOS can also be related to parton energy loss. Based on the quasi-particle linear Boltzmann transport (QLBT) model coupled to a (3+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamic model of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) evolution and a hybrid fragmentation-coalescence model for heavy quark hadronization, we perform a Bayesian analysis of the experimental data on D meson suppression RAA and anisotropy v2 at RHIC and the LHC. We achieve a simultaneous constraint on the QGP EOS and the heavy quark transport coefficient, both consistent with the lattice QCD results.

We establish a linear Boltzmann transport (LBT) model coupled to hydrodynamical background to study hard parton evolution in heavy-ion collisions. Both elastic and inelastic scatterings are included in our calculations; and heavy and light flavor partons are treated on the same footing. Within this LBT model, we provide good descriptions of heavy and light hadron suppression and anisotropic flow in heavy-ion collisions. Angular correlation functions between heavy and light flavor hadrons are studied for the first time and shown able to quantify not only the amount of heavy quark energy loss, but also how the parton energy is re-distributed in parton showers.

It is widely acknowledged that heavy flavor probes are sensitive to the properties of the quark-gluon plasma and are often considered an important tool for the plasma tomography studies. Forward rapidity observables can provide further insight on the dynamics of the medium due to the interplay between the medium size and the differences in the production spectra of heavy quark probes. In this proceedings we present the nuclear modification factor RAA's for B and D mesons, as well as heavy flavor leptons, in the rapidity range −4.0 < y < 4.0 obtained from relativistic Langevin equation with gluon radiation coupled with a (3+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics medium background. We present comparison with experimental data at mid-rapidity as well as predictions for different rapidity ranges.

To study the bulk properties of quark-gluon plasma produced at beam-energy scan (BES) energies at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), we extend the (3+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics clvisc to include net baryon number conservation and Israel-Stewart-like equations for baryon diffusion with the neos-bqs equation of state, fluctuating initial conditions from the Monte Carlo Glauber model and the afterburner smash. This integrated framework is shown to provide a good description of identified particle spectra, mean transverse momenta, and anisotropic flows for different centralities and over a wide range of collision energies (7.7-62.4 GeV). It is found that the mean momenta of identified particles and anisotropic flows increase mildly with the collision energy due to larger radial flow. We further compute the multiple-particle cumulant ratio v2{4}/v2{2} of elliptic flow across BES energies, and find that the relative fluctuations of elliptic flow are insensitive to the collision energy, consistent with the preliminary STAR data. Our model provides a benchmark for understanding the RHIC-BES data and studying the critical properties and phase structure of hot and dense QCD matter.

We study the longitudinal decorrelations of elliptic, triangular and quadrangular flows in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC and RHIC energies. The event-by-event CLVisc (3+1)-dimensional hydrodynamics model, combined with the fully fluctuating AMPT initial conditions, is utilized to simulate the space-time evolution of the strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma. Detailed analysis is performed for the longitudinal decorrelations of flow vectors, flow magnitudes and flow orientations. We find strong correlations between final-state longitudinal decorrelations of anisotropic flows and initial-state longitudinal structures and collision geometry: while the decorrelation of elliptic flow shows a non- monotonic centrality dependence due to initial elliptic geometry, typically the longitudinal flow decorrelations are larger in lower energy and less central collisions where the mean lengths of the string structure are shorter in the initial states.