φ meson measurements and flavor-dependent nuclear suppression at RHIC-PHENIX

Measurement of low mass vector mesons (rho, omega, phi) provides important information to understand the properties of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in the central heavy-ion collision at RHIC. The mass and branching ratio of the phi meson decay into di-electron and di-kaon could be modified in the excited vacuum due to the effect of partial chiral symmetry restoration. In addition, phi meson contains hidden strangeness and hence its measurement can figure out the strangeness production. The suppression pattern of phi meson with high transverse momentum in heavy-ion collisions, compared to scaled p+p results, provides the information to understand the mechanism of production and energy loss of strange quark with the strongly coupled matter. The PHENIX experiment at RHIC has measured the phi meson production in p+p, d+Au and Au+Au collisions at root s(NN) up to 200 GeV at mid-rapidity. In this paper, we will present recent PHENIX results about the phi meson production. The mass peaks for phi have been observed in both di-electron and di-kaon invariant mass spectra. The extracted spectra, mass and width of phi in p+p, d+Au and Au+Au are reviewed. Moreover, we compare the nuclear modification factors of various hadrons and discuss flavor dependence of their suppression patterns.