Studies of Heavy Flavor Jets Using D0-Hadron Correlations in Azimuth and Pseudorapidity in Au Au Collisons at 200 GeV at the STAR Experiment
Heavy flavor (HF) quarks (charm, bottom) are important probes of the medium produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions because they are formed in the early stage and propagate throughout the lifetime of the system. HF-meson spectra and azimuthal anisotropy ( v 2 ) measurements have been reported by experiments at RHIC and the LHC, and they suggest strong interactions of HF quarks with the medium. D 0 -hadron correlations on relative pseudorapidity and azimuth ( Δ η , Δ ϕ ) provide a method for disentangling correlation structures on ( Δ η , Δ ϕ )—allowing for separation of structures related to jets and bulk phenomena directly, with the D 0 serving as a proxy for a charm jet. In these proceedings, we present 2D D 0 -hadron angular correlations as a function of centrality in Au + Au collisions at s N N = 200 GeV. These data reveal a jet-like, peaked structure at ( Δ η , Δ ϕ ) = (0, 0) (near-side), and a Δ η -independent azimuthal harmonic modulation. Here, we focus on the evolution of the near-side peak’s yield and widths on ( Δ η , Δ ϕ ) as a function of centrality and compare them to results from light flavor correlations.