Heavy meson production in hot dense matter

The properties of charmed mesons in dense matter are studied using a unitary coupled-channel approach in the nuclear medium which takes into account Pauli-blocking effects and meson self-energies in a self-consistent manner. We obtain the open-charm meson spectral functions in this dense nuclear environment, and discuss their implications on hidden charm and charm scalar resonances and on the formation of $D$-mesic nuclei at FAIR energies.