Heavy quark production from colour glass condensate at RHIC

Abstract

I consider production of heavy quarks in pA and AA collisions in the framework of the colour glass condensate. I discuss the heavy quark production in pA collisions in a classical approximation which takes into account all multiple rescatterings of a proton in a nucleus. For peripheral collisions, the heavy quark production cross section can be written in the kT-factorized form. The kT-factorization is used to construct a simple model which takes into account both classical and quantum effects in pA and AA collisions. I review the main result of calculation based on that model: open charm in the central rapidity region at RHIC gets suppressed as a function of rapidity. Although the numbers obtained for the suppression factor are model dependent, the very fact of suppression is the general feature of the colour glass condensate at RHIC kinematical region. It indicates the onset of quantum evolution effects in a nucleus and is universal for all inclusive processes.