Heavy Flavor Physics in STAR Original Research Article

The STAR experiment at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) measured heavy flavor production via two independent channels: hadronic and semileptonic decays. The nonphotonic electron spectrum was measured over a wide range of pT (up to 10 GeV/c). The low-pT region was constrained by muon measurements. The extracted charm cross section, in p+p, d+Au, and Au+Au collisions, exhibits binary scaling suggestive of charm origins in the early phase of the collision. The nuclear modification factor shows a consistent pattern of suppression at high pT in central heavy-ion collisions not explained by current theoretical models.