Open charm measurement with HFT at STAR

TL;DR

This paper discusses the use of the Heavy Flavor Tracker at STAR to improve open charm hadron reconstruction, enabling detailed studies of quark thermalization and energy loss in heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

It introduces the HFT upgrade and demonstrates its simulation-based effectiveness in reconstructing open charm hadrons across a broad transverse momentum range.

Findings

HFT shows excellent reconstruction capability for open charm hadrons.

Simulations indicate precise measurements of D0 meson v_2 and R_{CP}.

Enhanced understanding of heavy-flavor quark behavior in quark-gluon plasma.

Abstract

Thermalization is one of the key questions in understanding the matter created in Au+Au collisions at RHIC. Heavy-flavor quark collectivity could be used to indicate the degree of thermalization of the light-flavor quarks. Heavy quark energy loss could give important information on color charge density of the medium. Direct reconstruction of open charm hadrons is essential for these measurements. The Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) is a proposed upgrade of the STAR experiment. Full GEANT simulation of tracking with HFT was performed, showing its excellent capability to reconstruct open charm hadrons in broad p_T range at midrapidity. Estimated errors on measurement of D0 meson v_2 and R_{CP} are presented.