Measurements of open charm hadrons in Au+Au collisions at sNN=200GeV by the STAR experiment

At Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) energies, charm quarks are primarily produced in hard partonic scatterings at the early stages of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. This makes them an ideal probe of the Quark–Gluon Plasma (QGP) as they experience the entire evolution of this hot and dense medium. The STAR experiment can measure the production of charm quarks and their interaction with the QGP through direct reconstruction of hadronic decays of D ± , D 0 , D s and [Formula: see text] hadrons, enabled by the excellent track-pointing resolution provided by the Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT). In these proceedings, we present the most recent results on open charm hadron production in [Formula: see text] collisions at [Formula: see text] from the STAR experiment. In particular, we discuss the nuclear modification factors of D ± and D 0 mesons, which provide information on the charm quark energy loss in the QGP. We also present the D s /D 0 and [Formula: see text]/D 0 yield ratios as functions of transverse momentum and collision centrality which help us better understand the charm quark hadronization process in heavy-ion collisions. The spectra of D 0 , D ± , D s and [Formula: see text] in 10–40[Formula: see text] central [Formula: see text] collisions are used to calculate the total charm quark production cross-section in [Formula: see text] collisions which, compared to the charm quark cross-section in [Formula: see text] collisions, gives insight into charm quark production in heavy-ion collisions.