Measurement of open heavy flavour production with single muons in p + p and d + Au collisions at RHIC

Abstract

Heavy flavour production in hadronic collisions is dominated by gluonic processes and so is a sensitive probe of the gluon structure function in the nucleon and its modification in nuclei. A study of heavy flavour production in p + p and d + Au collisions in various kinematic regions presents an opportunity to probe cold nuclear medium effects: parton shadowing, colour glass condensate, initial-state energy loss and coherent multiple scattering in final-state interactions. The PHENIX muon arms cover both forward and backward directions in the rapidity range 1.2 < |η| < 2.4. We investigate single muon production from open heavy flavour and light meson decays in p + p and d + Au collisions at forward and backward rapidities.