Speaker
Daniel Kikola
(Warsaw University of Technology)
Description
Heavy quarks are produced early in the heavy-ion collisions and they
are expected to interact differently from light quarks with the Quark
Gluon Plasma (QGP); therefore, they are unique probes of the QGP
properties. Moreover, their production and elliptic flow are sensitive
to the medium dynamics. These measurements for open heavy flavour
sector are crucial for understanding the parton energy loss mechanism
and the degree of thermalization of the QGP. They can be also used to
determine the transport coefficients of the QGP. Furthermore,
production of various quarkonia states can provide insight into
thermodynamic properties of the QGP since different states are
predicted to disassociate (due to the Debye screening of the
quark-antiquark potential) at different temperatures.
In this talk, we report on recent STAR results on heavy flavour
production at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200, 62.4 and 39 GeV. We present
nuclear modification factor and elliptic flow of open charm mesons and
electrons from semileptonic decays of heavy flavor hadrons. We also
report on new measurement of energy dependence of the J/psi
production. STAR data are compared to theoretical model calculations
and physics implications are discussed.
Author
Daniel Kikola
(Warsaw University of Technology)
