Possible evidence for radial flow of heavy mesons in d + Au collisions

Recent measurements of particle correlations and the spectra of hadrons at both RHIC and the LHC are suggestive of hydrodynamic behavior in very small collision systems (p + Pb, d + Au and possibly high multiplicity p + p collisions at the LHC). The measurements in p + Pb and d + Au collisions are both qualitatively and quantitatively similar to what is seen in heavy ion collisions where low viscosity hot nuclear matter is formed. While light quarks and gluons are thought to make up the bulk matter, one of the most surprising results in heavy ion collisions is that charm quarks also have a large v₂. Measurements of the transverse momentum spectra of electrons from the decay of D and B mesons in d + Au collisions show an enhancement in central collisions relative to p + p collisions. We employ the blast-wave model to determine if the flow of heavy quarks in d + Au and p + Pb collisions is able to explain the enhancement observed in the data. We find a reasonable description of the data with blast-wave parameters extracted from fits to the light hadron spectra, suggesting hydrodynamics as a possible explanation.