https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-006-0092-7
Regular Article – Experimental Physics
Open charm measurements at STAR
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 11973, USA
* e-mail: thomas.ullrich@bnl.gov
Received:
9
August
2006
Published online:
6
December
2006
We report on the measurements of D0 meson production via direct reconstruction through the hadronic decay channel D0→Kπ in minimum bias d+Au and Au+Au collisions at with pT up to ∼3 GeV/c. We derive the charm production total cross-section per nucleon–nucleon collision from a combination of three measurements: the D0 meson spectra, the non-photonic electron spectra from charm semi-leptonic decays obtained in p+p, d+Au, and Au+Au collisions, and the charm-decayed single muon (prompt muon) spectra at low pT in Au+Au collisions. The cross-section is found to follow binary scaling, which is a signature of charm production exclusively at the initial impact. The implications of charm quark energy-loss and thermalization in the strongly interacting matter are discussed.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2007