Thoughts on heavy quark production

Abstract

Various aspects of heavy flavour production in heavy ion collisions in the context of elementary collisions are reviewed. The interplay between theory in experiment in e+e− and data has been found to be non-trivial, even with new NLO calculations. Quarkonium suppression in p+A and A+A shows puzzling features, apparently connected to features of inclusive particle production. Open charm is found to scale as expected for a hard process, but strangeness is also found to share these features. These features contribute to heavy flavour as a interesting probe of strong interactions.