Quenching and flow of charm and bottom quarks via semi-leptonic decay of D and B mesons in Pb plus Pb collisions at the LHC

Heavy flavor particles provide important probes of the microscopic structure and thermodynamic properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. We study the energy loss and flow of charm and bottom quarks inside the QGP via the nuclear modification factor (R-AA) and elliptic flow coefficient (v(2)) of their decayed leptons in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. The dynamical evolution of the QGP is performed using the (3+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics model CLVisc; the evolution of heavy quarks inside the QGP is simulated with our improved Langevin model that takes into account both collisional and radiative energy loss of heavy quarks; the hadronization of heavy quarks is simulated via our hybrid coalescence-fragmentation model; and the semi-leptonic decay of D and B mesons is simulated via PYTHIA. By using the same spatial diffusion coefficient for charm and bottom quarks, we obtain smaller R-AA and larger v(2) of charm decayed leptons than bottom decayed leptons, indicating stronger energy loss of charm quarks than bottom quarks inside the QGP within our current model setup.