Abstract
We report a new measurement of the production of electrons from open heavy-flavor hadron decays (HFEs) at mid-rapidity (|y| < 0.7) in Au+Au collisions at \( \sqrt{s_{\textrm{NN}}} \) = 200 GeV. Invariant yields of HFEs are measured for the transverse momentum range of 3.5 < pT < 9 GeV/c in various configurations of the collision geometry. The HFE yields in head-on Au+Au collisions are suppressed by approximately a factor of 2 compared to that in p + p collisions scaled by the average number of binary collisions, indicating strong interactions between heavy quarks and the hot and dense medium created in heavy-ion collisions. Comparison of these results with models provides additional tests of theoretical calculations of heavy quark energy loss in the quark-gluon plasma.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the RHIC Operations Group and RCF at BNL, the NERSC Center at LBNL, and the Open Science Grid consortium for providing resources and support. This work was supported in part by the Office of Nuclear Physics within the U.S. DOE Office of Science, the U.S. National Science Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Science, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Ministry of Education, the Higher Education Sprout Project by Ministry of Education at NCKU, the National Research Foundation of Korea, Czech Science Foundation and Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office, New National Excellency Programme of the Hungarian Ministry of Human Capacities, Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, the National Science Centre and WUT ID-UB of Poland, the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia, German Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung and Technologie (BMBF), Helmholtz Association, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
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The STAR collaboration., Abdulhamid, M.I., Aboona, B.E. et al. Measurement of electrons from open heavy-flavor hadron decays in Au+Au collisions at \( \sqrt{s_{\textrm{NN}}} \) = 200 GeV with the STAR detector. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 176 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2023)176
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2023)176