Influence of bottom quark jet quenching on single electron tomography of Au + Au

High transverse momentum single (non-photonic) electrons are shown to be sensitive to the stopping power of both bottom, b, and charm, c, quarks in AA collisions. We apply the DGLV theory of radiative energy loss to predict c and b quark jet quenching and compare the FONLL and PYTHIA heavy flavor fragmentation and decay schemes. We show that single electrons in the pT=5-10GeV range are dominated by the decay of b quarks rather than the more strongly quenched c quarks in Au + Au collisions at s=200AGeV. The smaller b quark energy loss, even for extreme opacities with gluon rapidity densities up to 3500, is predicted to limit the nuclear modification factor, RAA, of single electrons to the range RAA∼0.5-0.6, in contrast to previous predictions of RAA≲0.2-0.3 based on taking only c quark jet fragmentation into account.