Heavy flavour production at LHC

TL;DR

The paper discusses the potential of the LHC to advance understanding of heavy flavour production mechanisms in proton-proton collisions, serving as a foundation for studying hot QCD matter in heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

It highlights the importance of studying heavy flavour production at LHC energies as a new way to test Quantum Chromodynamics and serve as a baseline for heavy-ion collision research.

Findings

Large cross section for heavy flavour production at 14 TeV

Potential to test QCD production mechanisms extensively

Establishment of heavy flavour as a probe for hot dense QCD matter

Abstract

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will open a new era in high energy physics. The expected large cross section for heavy flavour production in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 14 TeV will allow detailed studies of the production mechanisms and an extensive test of Quantum Chromodynamics. Since charm and beauty has been proposed as a good probe to study hot and dense QCD matter, the understanding of the production mechanisms in elementary proton-proton collisions is of primary importance as a reference for studies in heavy-ion collisions. In the early phase of LHC operation the experiments will focus on the investigation of the heavy flavour production mechanisms.