$$B_c$$ enhancement with non-thermalized bottom quarks in nuclear collisions at large Hadron collider

Abstract We study $$B_c$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>B</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:math> production in high-energy nuclear collisions in a transport approach with dissociation and regeneration at finite temperatures. Due to the rare production in p+p collisions and the strong combination of uncorrelated c and $${\bar{b}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mover> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>b</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mover> </mml:math> quarks in the quark-gluon plasma, the $$B_c$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>B</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:math> yield is significantly enhanced in the nuclear collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Moreover, the centrality and momentum-dependent yield of $$B_c$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>B</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:math> sensitively reflect the thermalization degree of bottom quarks. And the newly observed experimental data favors a far from the thermal bottom quark distribution in the quark-gluon plasma.