Charmed baryon production from the quark coalescence process in Au + Au collisions at the RHIC

A simple quark counting model, which was very successful for describing strange baryon production, was used to predict the yields of charmed baryons with single charmness quantum number in central Au + Au collisions at the RHIC energy. Because the quark counting model assumes a quark-gluon plasma state, a comparison of the future experimental data with the present predictions will be an important check for the existence of a deconfinement phase transion. As a confirmation, the J/ψ yield was also calculated by using the quark counting model at √ _NN = 200 GeV. The estimated J/ψ yield is consistent with the published upper limit by the PHENIX collaboration, which further supports the idea that the relevant degrees of freedom are quarks and gluons at the RHIC.