Dynamical heavy-quark recombination and the non-photonic single electron puzzle at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that thermal enhancement of heavy-baryon to heavy-meson ratios significantly suppresses non-photonic electron yields in heavy-ion collisions, impacting interpretations of energy loss mechanisms at RHIC.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamical quark recombination model to quantify the heavy-baryon to heavy-meson ratio enhancement and its effect on the electron nuclear modification factor.

Findings

Thermal enhancement increases heavy-baryon to heavy-meson ratio.

Suppression factor for $R_{AA}^e$ is significant at intermediate transverse momenta.

Consideration of this effect is necessary alongside energy loss in modeling.

Abstract

We show that the single, non-photonic electron nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}^e$ is affected by the thermal enhancement of the heavy-baryon to heavy-meson ratio in relativistic heavy-ion collisions with respect to proton-proton collisions. We make use of the dynamical quark recombination model to compute such ratio and show that this produces a sizable suppression factor for $R_{AA}^e$ at intermediate transverse momenta. We argue that such suppression factor needs to be considered, in addition to the energy loss contribution, in calculations of $R_{AA}^e$