The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has measured J/psi production for rapidities 2.2 < y < 2.2 in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. The J/psi invariant yield and nuclear modification factor R_AA as a function of centrality, transverse momentum and rapidity are reported. A suppression of J/psi relative to binary collision scaling of proton-proton reaction yields is observed. Models which describe the lower energy J/Psi data at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) invoking only J/psi destruction based on the local medium density would predict a significantly larger suppression at RHIC and more suppression at mid rapidity than at forward rapidity. Both trends are contradicted by our data.
We present the first measurement of photoproduction of J/psi and of two-photon production of high-mass e+e- pairs in electromagnetic (or ultra-peripheral) nucleus-nucleus interactions, using Au+Au data at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. The events are tagged with forward neutrons emitted following Coulomb excitation of one or both Au^{star} nuclei. The event sample consists of 28 events with m_{e+e-} > 2 GeV/c^2 with zero like-sign background. The measured cross sections at midrapidity of d\sigma / dy (J/psi + Xn, y=0) = 76 +/- 33 (stat) +/- 11 (syst) micro b and d^2\sigma/dm dy (e^+e^- + Xn, y=0) = 86 +/- 23 (stat) +/- 16 (syst) micro b/(GeV/c^2) for m_{e+e-} \in [2.0,2.8] GeV/c^2 are consistent with various theoretical predictions.
First results on charm quarkonia production in heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are presented. The yield of J/Psi's measured in the PHENIX experiment via electron-positron decay pairs at mid-rapidity for Au-Au reactions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV are analyzed as a function of collision centrality. For this analysis we have studied 49.3 million minimum bias Au-Au reactions. We present the J/Psi invariant yield dN/dy for peripheral and mid-central reactions. For the most central collisions where we observe no signal above background, we quote 90% confidence level upper limits. We compare these results with our J/Psi measurement from proton-proton reactions at the same energy. We find that our measurements are not consistent with models that predict strong enhancement relative to binary collision scaling.