Measurement of heavy flavor production and azimuthal anisotropy in small and large systems with ATLAS
Heavy-flavor hadron production and collective motion in A+A collisions provide insight into the energy loss mechanism and transport properties of heavy quarks in the QGP. The same measurements in p+A collisions serve as an important baseline for understanding the observations in A+A collisions. For example, detailed studies of heavy-flavor hadron azimuthal anisotropy in p+A collisions may help to address whether the observed long-range "ridge" correlation arises from hard or semi-hard processes, or if it is the result of mechanisms unrelated to the initial hardness scale.