PHENIX results on heavy flavor production in image and Au+Au collisions at RHIC Original Research Article

In relativistic p+p collisions, heavy flavors provide a tool to test perturbative Quantum Chromo-Dynamics (pQCD) calculations since they are produced at the early stage of the collision via hard processes involving large momentum transfer and are thus well suited to such calculations. On the other hand, in heavy ion collisions heavy flavors help advance our understanding of in-medium quark energy loss mechanisms on top of what has been learned using light quarks. This presentation discusses the latest results from PHENIX on heavy flavor mesons production in p+p and Au+Au collisions at a center of mass energy per nucleon-nucleon collision View the MathML source, as well as measurements that separate charm and beauty contributions versus transverse momentum, pT, in p+p collisions.