Azimuthal anisotropy of D-meson production in Pb-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=2.76 TeV

The production of the prompt charmed mesonsD(0), D+, andD(*+) relative to the reaction plane was measured in Pb-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon-nucleon collision of root s(NN) = 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. D mesons were reconstructed via their hadronic decays at central rapidity in the transverse-momentum (pT) interval 2-16 GeV/c. The azimuthal anisotropy is quantified in terms of the second coefficient v(2) in a Fourier expansion of the D-meson azimuthal distribution and in terms of the nuclear modification factor R-AA, measured in the direction of the reaction plane and orthogonal to it. The v(2) coefficient was measured with three different methods and in three centrality classes in the interval 0%-50%. A positive v(2) is observed in midcentral collisions (30%-50% centrality class), with a mean value of 0.204(-0.036)(+0.099) (tot.unc.) in the interval 2 < pT < 6 GeV/c, which decreases towards more central collisions (10%-30% and 0%-10% classes). The positive v(2) is also reflected in the nuclear modification factor, which shows a stronger suppression in the direction orthogonal to the reaction plane formidcentral collisions. The measurements are compared to theoretical calculations of charm-quark transport and energy loss in high-density strongly interacting matter at high temperature. The models that include substantial elastic interactions with an expanding medium provide a good description of the observed anisotropy. However, they are challenged to simultaneously describe the strong suppression of high-pT yield of D mesons in central collisions and their azimuthal anisotropy in noncentral collisions.