Propagation of charm quarks in equilibrating quark-gluon plasma

We study the propagation of charm quarks, produced from the initial fusion of partons, in an equilibrating quark-gluon plasma which may be formed in the wake of relativistic collisions of gold nuclei. Initial conditions are taken from a self-screened parton cascade model and the chemical equilibration is assumed to proceed via gluon multiplication and quark production. The energy loss suffered by the charm quarks is obtained by evaluating the drag force generated by the scattering with quarks and gluons in the medium. We find that the charm quarks may lose only about 10% of their initial energy in conditions likely to be attained at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, while they may lose up to 40% of their energy while propagating in the plasma created at the Large Hadron Collider. We discuss the implications for signals of the quark-gluon plasma.