Speaker
Michael McCumber
(University of Colorado)
Description
The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider recently took data in p+p and Au+Au collisions with a new silicon vertex detector (VTX). This upgrade detector is capable of measuring the off-vertex decay of heavy flavor decay electrons via distance of closest approach (DCA). The resulting measured DCA distributions will be a convolution of the parent meson momenta, decay lifetimes, and yields, combined with detector irresolution and backgrounds. We will describe an algorithm to unfold the full set of DCA distributions as a function of p_{T}, thereby allowing improved extraction of the charm and beauty yields. The progress for applying this technique to the heavy ion collision VTX data set will also be shown.
Primary author
Michael McCumber
(University of Colorado)
