Measurement of Heavy Flavor and Quarkonia Production by PHENIX

TL;DR

This paper reviews PHENIX experiment results on heavy flavor and quarkonia production in heavy ion collisions, revealing significant suppression and flow effects indicative of quark-gluon plasma properties.

Contribution

It provides comprehensive measurements of heavy quark and quarkonia production across various collision systems and energies, highlighting new insights into QGP interactions.

Findings

Large suppression of single electrons in Au+Au collisions

Observation of azimuthal anisotropy of heavy quarks

Differential suppression of J/psi at different rapidities

Abstract

Heavy quarks (charm and bottom) are good probes of the hot and dense medium created in relativistic heavy ion collisions since they are mainly generated at the beginning of collisions and interact with the media in all collision stages. In addition, heavy flavor quarkonia production is thought to be uniquely sensitive to the deconfined medium of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) through color screening. Heavy quark production has been studied by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC via measurements of single leptons from semi-leptonic decays in both the electron channel at mid-rapidity and in the muon channel at forward-rapidity. Large suppression and azimuthal anisotropy of single electrons have been observed in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV. These results suggest a large energy loss and flow of the heavy quarks in the hot, dense matter. The PHENIX experiment has also measured J/psi production up to sqrt(s) = 200 GeV in p+p, d+Au, Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions, both at mid (|y|<0.35) and forward (1.2<|y|<2.2) rapidities. In the most energetic collisions (central Au+Au), more suppression is observed at forward rapidity than at central rapidity. This can be interpreted either as a sign of quark recombination, or as a hint of additional cold nuclear matter effects. The current status and understanding of all these measurements will be reviewed.