PHENIX Measurements of Single Electrons from Charm and Bottom Decays at Midrapidity in Au + Au Collisions

Abstract

Heavy quarks are an ideal probe of the quark gluon plasma created in heavy ion collisions. They are produced in the initial hard scattering and therefore experience the full evolution of the medium. PHENIX has previously measured the modification of heavy quark production in Au+Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV via electrons from semileptonic decays, which indicated substantial modifications of the parent hadron momentum distribution. The PHENIX barrel silicon vertex detector (VTX), installed in 2011, allows for the separation of electrons from charm and bottom hadron decays through the use of displaced vertex measurements. These proceedings present the results of the completed analysis of the 2011 data set using the VTX.