Nuclear modification factor of nonphotonic electrons in heavy-ion collisions, and the heavy-flavor baryon-to-meson ratio
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The nuclear modification factor RAA of nonphotonic electrons in Au+Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV is studied by considering the decays of heavy-flavor hadrons produced in a quark coalescence model. Although an enhanced c/D0 ratio is predicted by the coalescence model, it is peaked at small transverse momenta (~2 GeV) due to the large difference between heavy and light quark masses. As a result, the enhanced c/D0 ratio, which is expected to suppress the electron RAA as the branching ratio of c decay into electrons is smaller than that of D0, does not lead to additional suppression of the electron RAA at large transverse momenta (5 GeV), where the suppression is mainly due to heavy quark energy loss in produced quark-gluon plasma. Also, the enhanced b/B0 ratio predicted by the coalescence model has even smaller effect on the nonphotonic electron RAA as bottom baryons and mesons have similar branching ratios for semileptonic decays into electrons. 2009 The American Physical Society.