Heavy Flavor Production in Heavy Ion Collisions

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project involves performing detailed studies of heavy quark (charm and bottom) production in high energy hadron-hadron, hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. Heavy quark hadrons with both zero and nonzero charm and/or bottom quantum numbers will be studied. Hadrons with nonzero charm and/or bottom quantum numbers, called open heavy quark hadrons, are expected to have large interaction cross sections as they propagate through the system in which they are produced, leading to observable changes in their momentum distributions. Hadrons with zero charm and/or bottom quantum numbers are called quarkonium. The rate of quarkonium production is modified by both cold nuclear matter and the hot, dense quark matter created in heavy-ion collisions. The challenge is to distinguish between the two sources of modification in the environment of a heavy-ion collision. During the course of this project the experimental charm production data will be reviewed and re-evaluated using up-to-date theoretical techniques. This review will help place all data on a more equal footing and provide a more reliable context to compare to modern data. Calculations of baseline heavy quark production will be made for future measurements at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory as well as at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Center for Nuclear Research. Cold nuclear matter effects on charm and bottom quarkonium will be made and compared to available data. Dense matter effects on these quarkonium states will also be revisited.