Observation of Ds±/D0 Enhancement In

We report on the first measurement of charm-strange meson D±s production at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at √sNN=200 GeV from the STAR experiment. The yield ratio between strange (D±s) and nonstrange (D0) open-charm mesons is presented and compared to model calculations. A significant enhancement, relative to a pythia simulation of p+p collisions, is observed in the D±s/D0 yield ratio in Au+Au collisions over a large range of collision centralities. Model calculations incorporating abundant strange-quark production in the quark-gluon plasma and coalescence hadronization qualitatively reproduce the data. The transverse-momentum integrated yield ratio of D±s/D0 at midrapidity is consistent with a prediction from a statistical hadronization model with the parameters constrained by the yields of light and strange hadrons measured at the same collision energy. These results suggest that the coalescence of charm quarks with strange quarks in the quark-gluon plasma plays an important role in D±s-meson production in heavy-ion collisions.Received 28 January 2021Revised 12 May 2021Accepted 21 July 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.092301Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasJets & heavy flavor physicsRelativistic heavy-ion collisionsNuclear Physics