Heavy quark production from jet conversions in a quark-gluon plasma

Recently, it has been demonstrated that the chemical composition of jets in heavy ion collisions is significantly altered compared to the jets in the vacuum. This signal can be used to probe the medium formed in nuclear collisions. In this study we investigate the possibility that fast light quarks and gluons can convert to heavy quarks when passing through a quark-gluon plasma. We study the rate of light to heavy jet conversions in a consistent Fokker-Planck framework and investigate their impact on the production of high-p_T charm and bottom quarks at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider.