Speaker
Description
sPHENIX is a next-generation experiment at RHIC for jet and heavy-flavor physics which was fully commissioned in 2024. Using its novel streaming-readout-capable, precision tracking system, sPHENIX collected 100 billion unbiased p+p collisions, and a further sample of minimum-bias Au-Au collisions, in Run-24. A key measurement of the sPHENIX heavy flavor physics program are measurements of the ratios of heavy flavor hadron yields, in both Au+Au and p+p collisions. These measurements, which include comparisons of $\Lambda_c$ to $D^0$ and the $D_s^+$ to $D^+$ differential yields, probe questions related to the hadronization of heavy-flavor baryons compared to mesons and of strangeness enhancement in the charm sector, both in the Quark-Gluon Plasma medium and in vacuum. For example, there are no previous measurements of the $\Lambda_c$/$D^0$ and $D_s^+$/$D^+$ baselines in p+p collisions at RHIC energies, modern Monte Carlo event generators give widely different predictions, and the ratios in Au+Au at RHIC are only poorly known. This talk presents the progress towards a new measurement from sPHENIX of the first $\Lambda_c$/$D^0$ and $D_s^+$/$D^+$ ratios in p+p collisions at RHIC.