Speaker
Sanghoon Lim
(Yonsei University)
Description
Charm and bottom quarks are formed predominantly by gluon fusion in
the initial hard scatterings at RHIC, making them good probes of the
full medium evolution. Previous measurements at RHIC have shown large
suppression and azimuthal anisotopy of open heavy flavor hadrons in
Au$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV. Explaining the
simultaneously large suppression and flow of heavy quarks has been a
challenge for the community. To further understand the heavy flavor
transport in the hot medium, it is imperative to also measure cold
nuclear matter effects which affect the initial distribution of heavy
quarks as well as the system size dependence of the final state
suppression. In this talk, new measurements by the PHENIX collaboration of
single electrons from heavy flavor decays in $p$$+$$p$, $d$$+$Au, and
Cu$+$Cu collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV are presented.
In particular, surprising enhancement of intermediate transverse momentum
heavy flavor leptons in d$+$Au at mid and backward rapidity are seen to grow
going to mid-central Cu$+$Cu collisions. This enhancement is much larger
than anti-shadowing of the parton distributions and is theoretically unexplained.
| On behalf of collaboration: | PHENIX |
|---|
Primary author
Sanghoon Lim
(Yonsei University)
