# Quark Matter 2014 - XXIV International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions

19-24 May 2014
Europe/Zurich timezone

## Statistically inferring nuclear modification of charm and beauty hadrons from PHENIX electron data

20 May 2014, 16:30
2h

### spectrum

Board: F-01
Poster Open Heavy Flavour and Quarkonia

### Speaker

Quantitative knowledge of heavy quark momentum distributions in the hot nuclear medium created by ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is of high value in quantitatively understanding the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) phase of nuclear matter. In particular, the modification of heavy-quark momentum distributions from nuclear collisions as compared to smaller collision environments (such as p+p) provides important clues about the density of color charges and their coupling strength, which is of fundamental importance in QCD. This poster describes a procedure for statistical inference of D and B meson $p_{T}$ yields from nonphotonic electrons (NPEs). The relative yield of D and B mesons is sensitive to the electron $p_{T}$ and displaced-vertex distributions because of their mass and lifetime difference. The dataset is composed of an invariant NPE yield vs. $p_{T}$ as well as the electron displaced-vertex information, both measured near midrapidity. The yield of $D,B$ and subsequent decay ($D\to e$ and $B\to e$) is modeled using a monte carlo event generator (e.g. PYTHIA). Using real data and the generative model as inputs, the yield of parent mesons is inferred in a rigorous Bayesian framework using Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling. The result is a full posterior distribution of D and B meson yields over a large $p_{T}$ range.