The effect of gluon shadowing on charm quark production in large impact parameter ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is investigated. Charm quark production cross sections are calculated for a range of noncentral impact parameters which can be determined from the global transverse energy distribution. We show that charm quark production is a good probe of the local parton density which determines the effectiveness of shadowing. We discuss why shadowing may have a spatial dependence and show that this spatial dependence may be detected in noncentral heavy ion collisions.

• Received 23 June 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.56.2726