Heavy-flavour production in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, measured with the ALICE detector

TL;DR

This paper reports the first measurements of nuclear modification factors for heavy-flavour hadrons in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, revealing how heavy quarks are affected by the quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data on heavy-flavour suppression in heavy-ion collisions at unprecedented energies.

Findings

Significant suppression of D mesons at high transverse momentum.

Reduced electron and muon yields indicating energy loss of heavy quarks.

First measurements of R_AA for heavy-flavour hadrons at LHC energies.

Abstract

We present the first results from the ALICE experiment on the nuclear modification factors for heavy-flavour hadron production in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt{s_NN}=2.76 TeV. Using proton-proton and lead-lead collision samples at sqrt{s}=7 TeV and sqrt{s_NN}=2.76 TeV, respectively, nuclear modification factors R_AA(pt) were measured for D mesons at central rapidity (via displaced decay vertex reconstruction), and for electrons and muons, at central and forward rapidity, respectively.