PHENIX heavy flavor highlights
Heavy flavor production is a sensitive probe of the initial gluon density in the nucleon and is modified by the entire evolution of the hot quark and gluon medium created in high-energy nucleus–nucleus collisions. Besides, it is a process that can be calculated by perturbative QCD because of their large mass. The PHENIX experiment at RHIC studied the heavy flavor productions for a broad momentum and rapidity ranges using single leptons from the semileptonic decay of charm and bottom hadrons, and dileptons from [Formula: see text] decays in [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]A, and Au [Formula: see text] Au collisions at [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]200[Formula: see text]GeV. In these proceedings, the recent experimental results in [Formula: see text], Au [Formula: see text] Au, and the small collision systems are presented and the heavy flavor productions and their modifications are discussed.