Heavy Flavor Measurements at STAR

TL;DR

This paper reports recent heavy flavor measurements from the STAR experiment across various collision systems and energies, providing insights into production mechanisms, flow, and suppression phenomena, and discusses future measurement prospects with upgraded detectors.

Contribution

It presents new experimental results on heavy flavor production, flow, and suppression in different collision systems and energies, and discusses implications and future measurement capabilities.

Findings

Heavy flavor production varies with collision energy and system.

Elliptic flow of heavy flavor electrons observed in Au+Au collisions.

Nuclear modification factors indicate suppression patterns consistent with theoretical models.

Abstract

We present a selection of recent heavy flavor results from the STAR experiment. Measurements of $D^0$ and $D^*$ meson production in $\sqrt{s}$=200 and 500 GeV p+p, as well as in $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$=200 GeV d+Au, Au+Au and 193 \GeV U+U collisions are presented and implications on the production mechanism are discussed. We report on the production and elliptic flow of electrons from semi-leptonic decays of heavy flavor hadrons in \snn{}=39, 62.4 and 200 GeV Au+Au collisions. Nuclear modification of $J/\psi$ production in $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$=39, 62.4 and 200 GeV Au+Au, and 193 GeV U+U, and of $\Upsilon$ in 200 GeV d+Au, Au+Au, and 193 GeV U+U collisions are compared to theoretical models. Finally we discuss the prospects of heavy flavor measurements with the recent detector upgrades.