PHENIX measurements of bottom and charm quark production

摘要

Heavy quarks are produced primarily in the early stage of high-energy collisions, before the formation of any quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Therefore heavy quarks provide valuable insight to the properties of the QGP, especially by changing the mass of the heavy quark. PHENIX is able to measure the nuclear modification factor of electrons from bottom and charm composed hadrons. PHENIX has also made measurements of the momentum integrated nuclear modification factor of B → J/ψ and prompt J/ψ production, observing no nuclear modification for B mesons and a significant suppression of prompt J/ψ due to its breaking in the medium. Additionally, the bb cross-section was measured in p+p collisions where it shows a factor of two larger than the center value of the Fixed-Order-Next-to-Leading-Log (FONLL) prediction.