Title: Open Heavy Flavor Measurements at STAR

Speaker: David Tlusty (Rice University)

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 talk, we report on recent STAR results of heavy flavor production at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 39, 62.4, 193, 200 and 500 GeV in p+p, Au+Au and U+U collisions. We present nuclear modification
factor and elliptic flow of open charm mesons and electrons from semileptonic decays of heavy flavor hadrons. STAR data are compared to theoretical model calculations and physics implications are discussed.