Observation of D0 meson nuclear modifications in Au+Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV

• Published in: Physical review letters Vol. 113; no. 14
• Main Authors: Adkins, J. K., Agakishiev, G., Ahammed, Z., Alford, J., Arkhipkin, D., Butterworth, J., Calderón de la Barca Sánchez, M., Cervantes, M. C., Chen, H. F., Chen, L., Cherney, M., Codrington, M. J. M., Debbe, R. R., Dedovich, T. G., Derevschikov, A. A., Derradi de Souza, R., Didenko, L., Ding, F., Draper, J. E., Du, C. M., Dunkelberger, L. E., Efimov, L. G., Engle, K. S., Eppley, G., Eun, L., Eyser, O., Fazio, S., Garand, D., Geurts, F., Girard, M., Greiner, L., Guo, Y., Hirsch, A., Horvat, S., Huang, B., Jacobs, W. W., Jang, H., Kotchenda, L., Kycia, R. A., Lauret, J., LeVine, M. J., Li, C., Li, W., Li, Y., Ljubicic, T., Lomnitz, M., Longacre, R. S., Mahapatra, D. P., Margetis, S., Matis, H. S., McShane, T. S., Mioduszewski, S., Mohanty, B., Morozov, D. A., Nogach, L. V., Novak, J., Nurushev, S. B., Oh, K., Olvitt, D. L., Pawlik, B., Pei, H., Pluta, J., Pujahari, P. R., Quintero, A., Raniwala, R., Ray, R. L., Ritter, H. G., Sahoo, N. R., Salur, S., Sandweiss, J., Shahaliev, E., Shao, M., Sharma, B., Singaraju, R. N., Sorensen, P., Stanislaus, T. D. S., Strikhanov, M., Sun, X., Sun, X. M., Takahashi, J., Tang, A. H., Tang, Z., Thomas, J. H., Timmins, A. R., Tokarev, M., Turnau, J., Ullrich, T., Van Buren, G., Vasconcelos, G. M. S., Vertesi, R., Viyogi, Y. P., Wang, J. S., Westfall, G. D., Xie, W., Xu, Y., Yan, W., Ye, Z., Yip, K., Zhang, J. B., Zhu, X.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Physical Society 30-09-2014
• ISSN: 0031-9007; 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.142301

We report the first measurement of charmed-hadron (D0) production via the hadronic decay channel (D0→K-+π+) in Au+Au collisions at √sNN=200 GeV with the STAR experiment. The charm production cross section per nucleon-nucleon collision at midrapidity scales with the number of binary collisions, Nbin, from p+p to central Au+Au collisions. The D0 meson yields in central Au+Aucollisions are strongly suppressed compared to those in p+p scaled by Nbin, for transverse momenta pT>3 GeV/c, demonstrating significant energy loss of charm quarks in the hot and dense medium. An enhancement at intermediate pT is also observed. Model calculations including strong charm-medium interactions and coalescence hadronization describe our measurements.