Toward an understanding of the single electron data measured at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)

By P. Gossiaux, J. Aichelin. 2008

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High transverse momentum (p{sub T}) single nonphotonic electrons which have been measured in the RHIC experiments come dominantly from heavy meson decay. The ratio of their p{sub T} spectra in pp and AA collisions [R{sub AA}(p{sub T})] reveals the energy loss of heavy quarks in the environment created by AA collisions. Using a fixed coupling constant and the Debye mass (m{sub D}{approx_equal}gT) as the infrared regulator, perturbative QCD (pQCD) calculations are not able to reproduce the data, neither the energy loss nor the azimuthal (v{sub 2}) distribution. Employing a running coupling constant and replacing the Debye mass by a more realistic hard thermal loop (HTL) calculation, we find a substantial increase in the collisional energy loss, which brings the v{sub 2}(p{sub T}) distribution as well as R{sub AA}(p{sub T}) to values close to the experimental ones without excluding a contribution from radiative energy loss.

Subfields: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/22980c74000a9d305ef2b2ae144512bb9b641e99