Open Charm Production at RHIC: Recent Results from STAR

Abstract

We report recent measurements on the open charm production in d+Au and p+p collisions at \(\sqrt {s_{NN} } = 200\) GeV from the STAR detector at RHIC. The two independent measurements — direct open charm hadron (D0, D* etc.) reconstruction and non-photonic single electron spectrum — provide consistent results. The mid-rapidity charm differential cross section per nucleon-nucleon collision from d+Au collisions at RHIC is \(d\sigma _{c\bar c}^{NN} /dy = 0.30 \pm 0.04(stat.) \pm 0.09(syst.)\) mb, which is higher than predictions from most of the NLO pQCD calculations. Implications for charmonium production in Au+Au collisions will also be discussed.