Open heavy flavor and quarkonia measurements in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC

J Bielčík

doi:10.1051/epjconf/20147000057

Abstract

The properties of the hot and dense nuclear matter produced at RHIC in heavy-ion collisions can be investigated in multiple ways by heavy flavor production. The STAR and PHENIX experiments have excellent capability to study both open heavy flavor and quarkonia. Heavy quarks are produced in early stage of the collisions and the mechanisms of their interaction with nuclear matter are not yet well understood. The open heavy flavor hadrons can be studied using electrons from their semileptonic decays or via direct reconstruction through their hadronic decay channels. The heavy quarkonia production is expected to be sequentially suppressed depending on the temperature of the produced nuclear matter. However, cold nuclear matter effects play an important role and have to be well understood. In this paper we report recent results from the RHIC heavyion program on non-photonic electrons, direct reconstruction of charm mesons, J/ ψ as well as ϒ in p+p, d+Au and Au+Au collisions at √ s NN = 200 GeV.

Highlights

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in USA has been since the year 2000 systematically studying the properties of hot and dense nulear matter by the means of heavy-ion collisions
The non-photonic electron transverse momentum spetra measured by STAR and PHENIX in p+p collsions at 200 GeV [8, 10, 11] are consistent with each other as well as with the upper bound of the FONLL calculation
PHENIX reported a detailed study of cold nuclear matter effects in open heavy flavor production by measuring the non-photonic electrons (NPE) spectra in d+Au collisions at 200 GeV for various cetralities of collisions [12]

Summary

Introduction

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in USA has been since the year 2000 systematically studying the properties of hot and dense nulear matter by the means of heavy-ion collisions. Several experimental phenomena are proposed to be a consequence of this phase transition, such as high-pT hadron suppression and back-to-back di-hadron suppression ("jet quenching") in central Au+Au collisions, large hadron elliptic flow (v2) and constituent quark number scaling of v2. These observables are related to the production of lights quarks and gluons, that are dominating the particle production. These quarks do not change their mass during the collision Due to their large mass, their production is expected to be well described and calculable by perturbative QCD (pQCD). In sections the selection of the recent results on heavy flavor production in the STAR and PHENIX experiments is discussed

Open heavy flavor

Υ measurements

Summary