Heavy quark and J/psi production at RHIC/PHENIX

Single electrons from open heavy quarks and di-leptons from J/psi mesons have been studied systematically at RHIC/PHENIX using data from p + p, d + Au and Au + Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 62.4 GeV, 130 GeV and 200 GeV. From the single electron study, the charm quark yield is found to scale with the number of binary collisions. This scaling has recently been confirmed using Au+Au collisions at 62.4 GeV. A new analysis shows that a high p_T suppression of single electrons is observed in Au + Au collisions at 200 GeV. This suppression suggests that heavy quarks lose significant energy in the medium. A weak rapidity dependence is seen in J/psi yields from d + Au data, which can be interpreted as a cold matter effect. We report also the results of a measurement of the spin alignment of the J/psi in the p_T range around 1.5 GeV/c.