Background: Heavy-flavor production in p+p collisions tests perturbative-quantum-chromodynamics (pQCD) calculations. Modification of heavy-flavor production in heavy-ion collisions relative to binary-collision scaling from p+p results, quantified with the nuclear-modification factor (R_AA), provides information on both cold- and hot-nuclear-matter effects. Purpose: Determine transverse-momentum, pt, spectra and the corresponding R_AA for muons from heavy-flavor mesons decay in p+p and Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV and y=1.65. Method: Results are obtained using the semi-leptonic decay of heavy-flavor mesons into negative muons. The PHENIX muon-arm spectrometers measure the p_T spectra of inclusive muon candidates. Backgrounds, primarily due to light hadrons, are determined with a Monte-Carlo calculation using a set of input hadron distributions tuned to match measured-hadron distributions in the same detector and statistically subtracted. Results: The charm-production cross section in p+p collisions at sqrt{s}=200 GeV, integrated over pt and in the rapidity range 1.4
Production cross section of negative muons from heavy-flavor mesons decay as a function of $p_T$ in $p$+$p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV.
Invariant production yields of negative muons from heavy-flavor-mesons decay as a function $p_T$ in Cu+Cu collisions for three different centrality intervals (40-94%, 20-40%, and 0-20%), scaled by powers of ten for clarity. The solid line associated to each set of points corresponds to a fit to the $p$+$p$ invariant yield distribution described in the text, scaled by the appropriate number of binary collisions $N_{coll}$ when comparing to the Cu+Cu measurements.
Invariant production yields of negative muons from heavy-flavor-mesons decay as a function $p_T$ in $p$+$p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV. The solid line associated to each set of points corresponds to a fit to the $p$+$p$ invariant yield distribution described in the text, scaled by the appropriate number of binary collisions $N_{coll}$ when comparing to the Cu+Cu measurements.
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