Physics – Nuclear Physics – Nuclear Experiment
Scientific paper
2011-12-31
Physics
Nuclear Physics
Nuclear Experiment
260 pages, 161 figures, dissertation defended 30 March 2011, submitted 12 April 2011, degree conferred 10 December 2011
Scientific paper
Measurements by the STAR and PHENIX collaborations indicate that a quark-gluon plasma, a hot and dense state of matter in which quarks and gluons are not confined inside hadrons, is formed in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Charm and bottom quarks have been predicted to interact with the medium differently than the light quarks; a study of heavy quark interactions with the medium provides an important test of theoretical models of the quark-gluon plasma. The spectrum of non-photonic electrons (and positrons) is dominated by electrons from the semileptonic decays of D and B mesons. Therefore, non-photonic electrons serve as proxies for heavy quarks. A measurement of the modification of the non-photonic electron spectrum in nucleus-nucleus collisions relative to p + p collisions allows the interactions of heavy quarks with the medium to be studied. Previous measurements indicate that high-transverse-momentum non-photonic electrons are suppressed in Au + Au collisions at 200 GeV (center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair) relative to p + p collisions at the same energy. The magnitude of that suppression is larger than was anticipated and it has been a challenge for theoretical models to predict the in-medium energy loss of light and heavy quarks simultaneously. This dissertation presents the first measurement of the yield of non-photonic electrons from open heavy-flavor decays in Cu + Cu collisions at 200 GeV and the suppression of that yield relative to p + p collisions. A comparison of this result to similar results for Au + Au collisions provides some indication that the geometry of a heavy-ion collision affects the average amount of energy loss by heavy quarks passing through the quark-gluon plasma.
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