Charm production: constraints to transport models and charm diffusion coefficient with ALICE

In this contribution, the nuclear modification factor and azimuthal anisotropy of prompt charm mesons and baryons in Pb–Pb collisions at \(\sqrt {s_{NN}}=5.02\) TeV by the ALICE Collaboration are presented. Heavy quarks are a very suitable probe to investigate the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) produced in heavy-ion collisions, since they are mainly produced in hard-scattering processes and hence in shorter timescales compared to the QGP. Measurements of charm-hadron production in nucleus–nucleus collisions are, therefore, useful to study the properties of the in-medium charm-quark energy loss via the comparison with theoretical models. Models describing the heavy-flavour transport and energy loss in a hydrodynamically-expanding QGP require also precise modelling of the in-medium hadronisation of heavy quarks, which is investigated via the measurement of prompt \({D_s^+}\) mesons and \({\mit \Lambda }_{c}^{+}\) baryons.