Köln 2004 – scientific programme
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HK: Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 7: Heavy Ions I
HK 7.1: Group Report
Monday, March 8, 2004, 15:45–16:15, F
Heavy-flavor measurements with the PHENIX experiment at RHIC — •Ralf Averbeck — State University of New York at Stony Brook
The production of heavy flavor, i.e. charm or beauty quarks, is an important probe of the hot and dense medium created in high energy nuclear collisions. Once produced, heavy quark-antiquark pairs form either bound quarkonia or hadronize into separate particles carrying open heavy flavor. The total yield is sensitive to the parton density in the incoming nuclei and, as such, also reflects initial state nuclear effects like shadowing. Medium effects from the hot and dense phase are expected to leave their footprint on heavy-flavor observables in later stages of the collision. The yield of heavy quarkonia might be reduced due to screening of the QCD potential in a deconfined medium or even enhanced due to coalescence. The issue of quark energy loss in the nuclear medium constitutes a critical test of our understanding of these reactions as well.
One approach to study heavy-flavor physics in nuclear reactions is to investigate the leptonic decay channels of particles carrying heavy flavor. At RHIC, PHENIX is the only experiment specifically designed for the measurement of electromagnetic probes and, therefore, is ideally suited for such studies. Present results from p-p, d-Au, and Au-Au collisions at √sNN = 200 GeV are discussed.