A lattice-QCD study of how open-charm baryons and mesons behave near the QCD chiral crossover temperature (T_pc ~ 156.5 MeV). Continuum-extrapolated fourth-order charm fluctuations and their correlations with baryon number, electric charge and strangeness (generalized charm susceptibilities) are used to reconstruct partial pressures of the charm sector. Below T_pc these pressures reveal enhanced contributions from experimentally unobserved Quark-Model 'missing' charmed resonances; at T_pc the Hadron Resonance Gas description breaks down, signaling in-medium modification and the onset of charm deconfinement, with low-lying 1S/1P states surviving above the crossover (sequential melting) and a charm-quark-like excitation acquiring a temperature-dependent in-medium mass.
Sharma, Karsch and Petreczky use continuum-extrapolated lattice QCD results for up to fourth-order charm fluctuations and their correlations with baryon number, electric charge and strangeness (gener…