Single Electrons from Heavy Flavor Decays in p+p Collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV

The invariant differential cross section for inclusive electron production in $p + p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 200$~GeV has been measured by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider over the transverse momentum range $0.4 \le p_T \le 5.0$~GeV/$c$ in the central rapidity region ($|\eta| \le 0.35$). The contribution to the inclusive electron spectrum from semileptonic decays of hadrons carrying heavy flavor, {\it i.e.} charm quarks or, at high $p_T$, bottom quarks, is determined via three independent methods. The resulting electron spectrum from heavy flavor decays is compared to recent leading and next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations. The total cross section of charm quark-antiquark pair production is determined to be $\sigma_{c\bar{c}} = 0.92 \pm 0.15 {\rm (stat.)} \pm 0.54 {\rm (sys.)}$~mb.
Comment: 329 authors, 6 pages text, 3 figures. v2 is version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. HEPdata tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.html