Abstract

We present novel predictions for open and closed heavy flavor suppression in heavy ion collisions from AdS/CFT.  Including only leading order mean energy loss, AdS/CFT overpredicts the suppression of D and B mesons as measured by RHIC and LHC.  However, fluctuations in the energy loss provides the crucial bridge to data.  We derive a new result for the fluctuations in energy loss for open heavy flavor in AdS/CFT including a new, independent calculation of the transport coefficient qhat.  With this result for the fluctuations, our predictions for D and B meson suppression are in surprisingly good agreement with data.  We extend the phenomenological application of AdS/CFT to closed heavy flavor by computing the suppression of Upsilon at LHC.  Using the complex quarkonia potential derived from AdS/CFT, we compute the complex binding energies of the quarkonia.  Just like the open heavy flavor case, the suppression prediction based on this leading order, non-fluctuating complex binding energy leads to an oversuppression of Upsilon compared to data.  We conclude with a discussion future avenues of research in strongly-coupled heavy flavor physics in heavy ion collisions.