Heavy flavor at the large hadron collider in a strong coupling approach

Employing nonperturbative transport coefficients for heavy-flavor (HF) diffusion through quark–gluon plasma (QGP), hadronization and hadronic matter, we compute D- and B  -meson observables in Pb+Pb (s=2.76 TeV) collisions at the LHC. Elastic heavy-quark scattering in the QGP is evaluated within a thermodynamic T-matrix approach, generating resonances close to the critical temperature which are utilized for recombination into D and B   mesons, followed by hadronic diffusion using effective hadronic scattering amplitudes. The transport coefficients are implemented via Fokker–Planck Langevin dynamics within hydrodynamic simulations of the bulk medium in nuclear collisions. The hydro expansion is quantitatively constrained by transverse-momentum spectra and elliptic flow of light hadrons. Our approach thus incorporates the paradigm of a strongly coupled medium in both bulk and HF dynamics throughout the thermal evolution of the system. At low and intermediate pTpT, HF observables at LHC are reasonably well accounted for, while discrepancies at high pTpT are indicative for radiative mechanisms not included in our approach.