Speaker
Dr
Kai Schweda
(University of Heidelberg)
Description
Heavy-quarks are, due to their large mass, unique tools to probe the quark
gluon plasma created in high-energy nuclear collisions. In proton-proton
collisions, heavy-quark production comprises a fundamental challenge to
theory and experiment. We report on recent results from the ALICE experiment
on heavy flavour production in $pp$ and $Pb-Pb$ collisions at unprecedented
high energies of $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV and $\sqrt{\mathrm{s}_{_{\mathrm{NN}}}} =
2.76$ TeV, respectively, as provided by the Large Hadron Collider. Open
charmed hadrons are kinematically fully reconstructed in the hadronic decay
channels $D^0\rightarrow K^-\pi^+$, $D^+\rightarrow K^-\pi^+ \pi^+$, and
$D^{*+} \rightarrow D^0 (K^-\pi^+) + \pi^+$ and identified through their
secondary decay-vertex topology. Inclusive charm and beauty production is
measured by detecting electrons (muons) from semileptonic decays of open
charmed and beauty hadrons in the central (forward) region. First results on
nuclear modifications factors in $Pb-Pb$ collisions from hadronic and
semi-leptonic decays are presented.
Comparison to results from state-of-the-art QCD calculations is given.
Primary author
Dr
Kai Schweda
(University of Heidelberg)
