Measurement of charm production cross-section and leptons from its semileptonic decay at RHIC

TL;DR

This thesis measures charm production and decay leptons at RHIC, using novel techniques to constrain charm cross-sections, spectral shapes, and flow properties in heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a new method for identifying low-$p_T$ muons from charm decays and combines multiple measurements to precisely determine charm production at RHIC.

Findings

Constrained the total charm production cross-section at mid-rapidity.

Extracted the spectral shape of charmed hadrons.

Studied possible charm radial flow in Au+Au collisions.

Abstract

In this thesis, we present the measurements of $D^{0}\to K\pi$ at low $p_T$ ($p_T\leq2$ GeV/$c$) and non-photonic electron spectra ($0.9\leq p_T\leq5$ GeV/$c$) from $D^0$ semi-leptonic decay. In addition, we use a newly proposed technique to identify muons from charm decays at low $p_T$. The combination of all these three measurements stringently constrains the total charm production cross-section at mid-rapidity at RHIC. They also allow the extraction of the charmed hadron spectral shape and a study of possible charm radial flow in Au+Au collisions.