Speaker
Description
Charm quarks are abundantly produced in ultra-relativistic collisions of protons and heavy ions, benefiting from the high energies achieved at modern colliders. Owing to their unique characteristics, they provide a powerful means to explore fundamental—and still unresolved—aspects of the strong interaction. The production of charmed mesons and baryons offers insight into the mechanisms of hadronization. In heavy-ion collisions, charm quarks are created prior to the formation of the quark–gluon plasma and thus serve as valuable external probes of this hot, strongly interacting medium. Yet, recent evidence supports a fluid-dynamic description of charm-quark diffusion within the QCD plasma. In this talk, I will discuss how recent experimental measurements in heavy-flavor production are driving significant progress in our understanding of QCD, and I will outline the exciting opportunities that lie ahead.
