Muon production at forward rapidity (1.5 < |\eta| < 1.8) has been measured by the PHENIX experiment over the transverse momentum range 1 < p_T \le 3 GeV/c in sqrt(s) = 200 GeV p+p collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. After statistically subtracting contributions from light hadron decays an excess remains which is attributed to the semileptonic decays of hadrons carrying heavy flavor, i.e. charm quarks or, at high p_T, bottom quarks. The resulting muon spectrum from heavy flavor decays is compared to PYTHIA and a next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculation. PYTHIA is used to determine the charm quark spectrum that would produce the observed muon excess. The corresponding differential cross section for charm quark production at forward rapidity is determined to be d\sigmac c^bar)/dy|_(y=1.6)=0.243 +/- 0.013 (stat.) +/- 0.105 (data syst.) ^(+0.049(-0.087) (PYTHIA syst.) mb.
Differential charm cross section at forward rapidity of 1.6 An additional +0.049 -0.087 systematic uncertainty associated with the PYTHIA normalization is not included in the values given.
The PHENIX experiment has measured mid-rapidity transverse momentum spectra (0.4 < p_T < 4.0 GeV/c) of single electrons as a function of centrality in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. Contributions to the raw spectra from photon conversions and Dalitz decays of light neutral mesons are measured by introducing a thin (1.7% X_0) converter into the PHENIX acceptance and are statistically removed. The subtracted ``non-photonic'' electron spectra are primarily due to the semi-leptonic decays of hadrons containing heavy quarks (charm and bottom). For all centralities, charm production is found to scale with the nuclear overlap function, T_AA. For minimum-bias collisions the charm cross section per binary collision is N_cc^bar/T_AA = 622 +/- 57 (stat.) +/- 160 (sys.) microbarns.
Value of the Alpha power as used in a fit of dN/dy versus Ncoll of the form A*Ncoll^Alpha, where N is the non photonic electron yield and Ncoll the number of p+p collisions This value only includes data from Au+Au collisions The value of Alpha = 1 is the expectation in the absence of medium effects.
Value of the Alpha power as used in a fit of dN/dy versus Ncoll, of the form A*Ncoll^Alpha, where N is the non photonic electron yield and Ncoll the number of p+p collisions This value is calculated including previous data of p+p collisions, measured by PHENIX, in addition of the Au+Au data The value of Alpha = 1 is the expectation in the absence of medium effects.
Spectrum in transverse momentum of electrons created in open heavy flavor decays, for minimum bias events.
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