Open heavy flavor measurements at STAR

Abstract

In relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC, heavy quarks are expected to be created from initial hard scatterings. Since heavy quarks have large masses, long life time, and negligible annihilation due to their small population, the number of heavy quarks is conserved during whole medium evolution. The interaction between heavy quarks and the medium is sensitive to the early medium dynamics, therefore heavy quarks are suggested as an ideal probe to quantify the properties of the strongly interacting QCD matter. In this article, we report on recent STAR results of open heavy flavor production at √s = 200 and 500 GeV in p+p, √sNN = 200 GeV in Au+Au and √sNN = 193 GeV in U+U collisions.