document: Within a coalescence approach as successfully applied earlier in the light-quark sector, we have evaluated transverse-momentum dependencies of charmed hadrons in central heavy-ion reactions at RHIC. For the charm-quark distributions at hadronization we have considered two limiting scenarios, i.e., no reinteractions (using spectra from PYTHIA) and complete thermalization with transverse flow of the bulk matter. The resulting J/ψ (mT-)spectra differ in slope by up to a factor of 2 (harder for pQCD c-quarks), and the integrated yield is about a factor of 3 larger in the thermal case. For D-mesons, we found that the difference in the slope parameters of the pT-spectra in the two scenarios is less pronounced, but their elliptic flow is about a factor of 2 larger for pT⩾1.5 GeV in the thermalized case. The elliptic flow pattern of D-mesons was found to be essentially preserved in the single-electron decay spectra, rendering the latter a very promising observable to address the strength of charm reinteractions in the QGP. The present study can be straightforwardly generalized to charmed baryons (Λc), which may serve as a complimentary probe for charm-quark reinteractions in the QGP.
extractive_keyphrases: baryons charmed hadrons charm reinteractions coalescence approach complete thermalization complimentary probe difference in the slope parameters elliptic flow hadronization integrated yield qgp spectra transverse flow
abstractive_keyphrases: central heavy-ion reactions charm-quark distributions charm-quark reinteractions d-mesons elliptic flow pattern evaluated transverse-momentum dependencies light-quark sector pqcd c-quarks pt-spectra quark single-electron decay spectra