Energy Loss and Flow of Heavy Quarks in<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>Au</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mi>Au</mml:mi></mml:math>Collisions at<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:msqrt><mml:msub><mml:mi>s</mml:mi><mml:mi>NN</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:msqrt><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>200</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>GeV</mml:mi></mml:math>

The PHENIX experiment at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has measured electrons with $0.3&lt;{p}_{T}&lt;9\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}/c$ at midrapidity ($|y|&lt;0.35$) from heavy-flavor (charm and bottom) decays in $\mathrm{Au}+\mathrm{Au}$ collisions at $\sqrt{{s}_{\mathrm{NN}}}=200\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$. The nuclear modification factor ${R}_{\mathrm{AA}}$ relative to $p+p$ collisions shows a strong suppression in central $\mathrm{Au}+\mathrm{Au}$ collisions, indicating substantial energy loss of heavy quarks in the medium produced at RHIC energies. A large azimuthal anisotropy ${v}_{2}$ with respect to the reaction plane is observed for $0.5&lt;{p}_{T}&lt;5\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}/c$ indicating substantial heavy-flavor elliptic flow. Both ${R}_{\mathrm{AA}}$ and ${v}_{2}$ show a ${p}_{T}$ dependence different from those of neutral pions. A comparison to transport models which simultaneously describe ${R}_{\mathrm{AA}}({p}_{T})$ and ${v}_{2}({p}_{T})$ suggests that the viscosity to entropy density ratio is close to the conjectured quantum lower bound, i.e., near a perfect fluid.