Consequences of a Ac/D enhancement effect on the non-photonic electron nuclear modification factor in central heavy ion collisions at RHIC energy

The RHIC experiments have measured the nuclear modification factor R AA of non-photonic electrons in Au+Au collisions at √SNN = 200 GeV. This R AA exhibits a large suppression for p t > 2 GeV/c which is commonly attributed to heavy-quark energy loss. In order to reproduce satisfactorily the data, energy-loss models assume a heavy-quark energy loss similar to that of light quarks. However, it is expected that the heavy-quark radiative energy loss is smaller than the light quark one because of the so-called dead-cone effect. In this paper, we show that a charm baryon/meson enhancement, as is observed for the light and strange quarks, can explain a part of the suppression. This phenomenon has been put forward in a previous work. At variance, we show here that a A c /D ratio close to unity, as observed for the light and strange quarks, could explain 20-25% of the suppression of non-photonic electrons in central Au+Au collisions. This effect remains significant at relatively high non-photonic electron transverse momenta of 8-9 GeV/c.