Open Charm as a Probe of Pre-Equilibrium Dynamics in Nuclear Collisions?

Abstract

The pre-equilibrium contribution to open charm production in nuclear collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ AGeV is calculated using three different models for the correlations between momentum and space-time coordinates. Ideal (Bjorken) correlation between the rapidity $y$ and space-time rapidity $\eta$ of mini-jet gluons suppresses greatly the pre-equilibrium yield and even allowing for the minimal uncertainty correlations leads, in contrast to previous estimates, only to a small pre-equilibrium charm yield as compared to initial yield due to gluon fusion. The ``intrinsic'' charm process is negligible in the mid-rapidity domain.

Comments: 25 pages, revtex, 10 figures, a typing mistake in equation(16) corrected, a reference changed