Measurement of Open Heavy Flavor Production with Single Muons in p+p and d+Au Collisions at RHIC

Abstract

Heavy flavor production in hadronic collisions is dominated by gluonic processes and so is a sensitive probe of the gluon structure function in the nucleon and its modification in nuclei. A study of heavy flavor production in p+p and d+Au collisions in various kinematic regions presents an opportunity to probe cold nuclear medium effects; parton shadowing, color glass condensate, initial state energy loss, and coherent multiple scattering in final state interactions. The PHENIX muon arms cover both forward and backward directions in the rapidity range of $1.2 < |\eta| < 2.4$. We investigate single muon production from open heavy flavor and light mesons decay in p+p and d+Au collisions at forward and backward rapidity.