| Summary: | Includes abstract. === Includes bibliographical references. === The success of the Standard Model of particle physics in describing a large variety of experimental results has been supported by the prediction and subsequent discovery of the charm, bottom, and top quarks, and the Z, W±, and Higgs bosons. The theory of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), which describes the strong interaction between quarks and gluons in the Standard Model, predicts a phase transition from hadronic matter to a deconfined Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) at high temperature and energy density. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was built to achieve these conditions to test the predictions of QCD and understand the properties of a deconfined medium. Charm (c) quarks have been suggested as ideal probes of the medium created in heavy ion collisions, as they are created primarily in the initial hard scattering of the collision because of their large mass.
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