Speaker
Description
Charm quarks are predominantly produced in the early stages of the heavy-ion
collisions via hard scattering because of
their high mass. Thus, they experience the entire evolution of the Quark-Gluon Plasma
created in such collisions. Compared to light quarks,
charm quarks thermalize more slowly. The open
charm hadrons present, therefore, a unique probe to the properties of
the hot and dense nuclear matter by measuring their energy loss and
degree of thermalization in the medium. Furthermore, with the combined measurements of
D mesons, D$_\mathrm{s}$, and $\Lambda_\mathrm{c}$, we can study
multiple modes of
coalescence of charm quarks with
light quarks in heavy-ion collisions.
The newly installed Heavy Flavor Tracker at the STAR experiment
enables full topological reconstruction of open charm hadrons. It opens
the door to reconstructing D$_\mathrm{s}$ and $\Lambda_\mathrm{c}$ for the first time at RHIC
and greatly improves measurements of D$^0$ mesons.
In this talk, we present the latest results from the direct reconstruction
of open charm hadrons via hadronic channels at the STAR experiment. In addition,
we discuss comparisons to model calculations of the charm hadron
production and similar measurements of other particle species.
