EPS-HEP 2017

Measurements of charm meson production in p+p, p+Au and Au+Au collisions by the STAR experiment

Not scheduled

15m

Salone Adriatico (Palazzo del Casinò)

Board: HI-8

Poster Presentation Heavy Ion Physics Poster session

Speaker

Lukas Kramarik (Czech Technical University (CZ))

Description

Charm quarks possess large masses and thus they are expected to be primarily produced at the initial stages of heavy-ion collisions. Hot and dense nuclear matter, usually referred to as the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), can also be created in these collisions. Therefore, the QGP can be studied using charm quarks as penetrating probes via the in-medium energy loss, which is deeply related to the intrinsic properties of the medium. In particular, a mass ordering of the parton energy loss in the hot medium is predicted, i.e. heavy-flavour quarks are expected to lose less energy than light quarks and gluons. Measurements of charm meson production in heavy-ion collisions provide a great opportunity to study the charm quark energy loss in the medium, and thus the QGP properties.

In this presentation, we will report the most recent measurements of ${\mathrm{D}}^0$, ${\mathrm{D}}^{\pm }$ and ${\mathrm{D}}^{\ast \pm }$ production in p+p, p+Au and Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}$ $=200$ GeV. These mesons are reconstructed via their hadronic decay channels, where the daughter particles can be tracked and identified with excellent precision by the STAR experiment at RHIC. Measurements of D meson production in p+p collisions provide a baseline for the similar measurements in p+Au and Au+Au collisions to quantify the cold and hot nuclear matter effects. At high transverse momentum region and in central Au+Au collisions, D meson production is strongly suppressed compared to that in p+p collisions, indicating substantial charm quark energy loss in the medium. These results will be compared to those of light hadrons as well as theoretical calculations.