Charm production at RHIC to O(αs3)

Abstract We present results on rapidity and transverse momentum distributions of inclusive charm quark production in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC, including the next-to-leading order, O ( α s 3 ), radiative corrections and the nuclear shadowing effect. We find the effective, nuclear K-factor to be K ( y ) ≈ 1.4 for ∥ y ∥ ≤ 3 in the rapidity distribution, while 1 ≤ K(p T ) ≤ 3 for 1 GeV ≤ p T ≤ 6 GeV in the p T distribution. We incorporate multiple parton scattering in our calculations of the fraction of all central events that contain at least one charm quark pair. We obtain the effective A -dependence of the charm cross sections. Finally, we comment on the possibility of detecting the quark-gluon plasma signal as an enhanced charm production in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC.