2006/09/19 by Stephen Adler, PHENIX Collaboration, S. Afanasiev +99 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Charm (quantum number) #Charm quark #Hadron #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Muon #Nuclear physics #Order (exchange) #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Production (economics) #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum chromodynamics #Quark #Rapidity #hep-ex
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.76.092002
published as Phys.Rev.D76:092002,2007 · 329 authors, pages text, 18 figures, tables. Submitted to Physical Review D. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.html
arxiv created 2006/09/19 · openalex publication_date 2007/11/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Muon production at forward rapidity (1.5\ensuremath≤|\ensuremathη|\ensuremath≤1.8) has been measured by the PHENIX experiment over the transverse momentum range 1\ensuremath≤pT\ensuremath≤3 GeV/c in √(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 pT, 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\ensuremathσ_cc/dy|y=1.6=0.243\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi0.013(stat.)\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi0.105(data syst.)\genfrac0+0.049\ensuremath-0.087(PYTHIA syst.) mb.