Heavy Flavor from RHIC to the EIC

One of the fundamental questions posed by physicists today is the nature of matter at high densities and temperatures, and how it can be used to tell us about the formation of the universe. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) can produce matter under such conditions, known as Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Key probes of QGP use heavy flavor hadrons which have masses above the critical temperature, ensuring they were produced in the initial collision and experience the full evolution of the QGP. Several experiments at RHIC have been able to resolve heavy flavor signatures, pushing discovery measurements to precision measurements. When the EIC comes online at BNL, it will enable precise measurements of quark and gluon PDFs, and aims to shed light on questions such as the trace anomaly of the proton mass. These heavy flavor probes at RHIC and the EIC enable important insights into the structure of hadronic matter at high densities, large temperatures and small scales.