Heavy-flavour production in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at ALICE

TL;DR

This paper reports on ALICE's measurements of heavy-flavour particle production in proton-proton and lead-lead collisions at high energies, comparing results with theoretical predictions and presenting first signals in heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data on heavy-flavour production at LHC energies and introduces the first open charm signals in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV.

Findings

Measured cross sections of electrons, muons, and open charm in pp collisions at 7 TeV.

Compared experimental results with NLO pQCD calculations.

First observation of open charm signals in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV.

Abstract

In this contribution, recent ALICE measurements of the production cross section of single electrons, single muons and open charmed mesons in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV are reported. The data are compared to next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations. First open charm signals in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 2.76 TeV are shown.