Energy and system size dependent heavy flavor measurements at PHENIX at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper presents recent measurements of heavy flavor production at PHENIX across various collision systems at RHIC, providing insights into nuclear medium effects, production mechanisms, and energy loss in the Quark Gluon Plasma.

Contribution

It reports new measurements of heavy flavor observables in different collision systems, highlighting the dependence on system size and energy, and advances understanding of medium effects in heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Heavy flavor production varies with system size and energy.

Initial and final state effects influence heavy flavor suppression.

Flavor-dependent energy loss observed in QGP.

Abstract

Heavy flavor production is an ideal tool to study the properties of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). The heavy flavor production at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has its unique kinematic coverage and different production mechanisms from the Larger Hadron Collider (LHC) measurements. Heavy flavor products created in heavy ion collisions experience the whole evolution of nuclear medium. It's critical to measure both open and closed heavy flavor products in different collision systems to isolate cold/hot nuclear medium effects and initial/final state interactions. We report recent heavy flavor measurements at PHENIX in 200 GeV $p$+$p$, $p$+Al, $p$+Au, $^{3}$He+Au and Au+Au collisions that include: the correlated di-muon analysis in 200 GeV $p$+$p$ and $p$+Au collisions; the rapidity and $N_{part}$ dependent $J/\psi$ $R_{AB}$ measured in asymmetric small systems; open heavy flavor $v_{2}$ measured in 200 GeV d+Au and Au+Au collisions. These measurements provide further information about the heavy flavor production mechanism, initial and final state nuclear modification and flavor dependent energy loss in QGP.