Dynamics and hadronization at intermediate transverse momentum at RHIC

The ultra‐relativistic heavy‐ion program at RHIC has shown that at intermediate transverse momenta $(pT≃2–6 GeV)$ standard (independent) parton fragmentation can neither describe the observed baryon‐to‐meson ratios nor the empirical scaling of the hadronic elliptic flow $(v2)$ according to the number of valence quarks. Both aspects find instead a natural explanation in a coalescence plus fragmentation approach to hadronization. After a brief review of the main results for light quarks, we focus on heavy quarks showing that a combined fragmentation and quark‐coalescence framework is relevant also here. Moreover, within relativistic Langevin simulations we find evidence for the importance of heavy‐light resonances in the Quark‐Gluon Plasma (QGP) to explain the strong energy loss and collective flow of heavy‐quark spectra as inferred from non‐photonic electron observables. Such heavy‐light resonances can pave the way to a unified understanding of the microscopic structure of the QGP and its subsequent hadronization by coalescence.