Energy Loss and Flow of Heavy Quarks in Au+Au Collisions at \sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV

The PHENIX collaboration Adare, A. ; Afanasiev, S. ; Aidala, C. ; et al.
Phys.Rev.Lett. 98 (2007) 172301, 2007.
Inspire Record 731668 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.57287

The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has measured electrons from heavy flavor (charm and bottom) decays for 0.3 < p_T < 9 GeV/c at midrapidity (|y| < 0.35) in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. The nuclear modification factor R_AA relative to p+p collisions shows a strong suppression in central Au+Au collisions, indicating substantial energy loss of heavy quarks in the medium produced at RHIC. A large azimuthal anisotropy, v_2, with respect to the reaction plane is observed for 0.5 < p_T < 5 GeV/c indicating non-zero heavy flavor elliptic flow. Both R_AA and v_2 show a p_T dependence different from those of neutral pions. A comparison to transport models which simultaneously describe R_AA(p_T) and v_2(p_T) suggests that the viscosity to entropy density ratio is close to the conjectured quantum lower bound, i.e., near a perfect fluid.

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