Transport coefficients of heavy quarks around Tc at finite quark chemical potential.

The interactions of heavy quarks with the partonic environment at finite temperature T and finite quark chemical potential μq are investigated in terms of transport coefficients within the dynamical quasiparticle model (DQPM) designed to reproduce the lattice-QCD (lQCD) results (including the partonic equation of state) in thermodynamic equilibrium. These results are confronted with those of nuclear many-body calculations close to the critical temperature Tc. The hadronic and partonic spatial diffusion coefficients join smoothly and show a pronounced minimum around Tc at μq = 0 as well as at finite μq. Close to and above Tc its absolute value maTches the lQCD calculations for μq = 0. The smooth transition of the heavy-quark transport coefficients from the hadronic to the partonic medium corresponds to a crossover in line with lattice calculations, and differs substantially from perturbative-QCD calculations which show a large discontinuity at Tc. This indicates that in the vicinity of Tc dynamically dressed massive partons should be the effective degrees of freedom in the quark-gluon plasma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]