Speaker
Description
Hadrons carrying heavy quarks, i.e. charm or bottom, are important
probes of the hot and dense medium created in relativistic heavy-ion
collisions. Heavy quark-antiquark pairs are mainly produced in initial
hard scattering processes of partons. While some of the produced pairs
form bound quarkonia, the vast majority hadronize into open heavy
flavor particles. RHIC experiments carry out a comprehensive physics
program which studies open heavy flavor and quarkonium production in
relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The discovery at RHIC of large
high-pT suppression and flow of electrons from heavy quarks flavors
have altered our view of the hot and dense matter formed in central
Au+Au collisions at 200 GeV. These results suggest a large energy loss
and flow of heavy quarks in the hot, dense matter. In recent years,
the RHIC experiments installed silicon vertex trackers both in central
rapidity and in forward rapidity regions, and has collected large data
samples. These silicon trackers enhance the capability of heavy flavor
measurements via precision tracking.
This talk summarizes the latest RHIC experiments' results concerning
open and closed charm and beauty heavy quark production measured
through their semileptonic decays in p+p, p/d + Au and Au+Au
collisions as a function of rapidity and energy, and their
interpretation with respect to the current theoretical understanding
on this topic.
