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

Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Brehova 7, Prague, 11519, Czech Republic

^a e-mail: jaroslav.bielcik@fjfi.cvut.cz

Published online: 10 April 2014

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.