Heavy flavour and quarkonium at forward and central rapidity in p-p collisions with ALICE at LHC

TL;DR

This paper reports on measurements of heavy flavour and quarkonium production in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV with ALICE at LHC, providing data to test QCD and serve as a baseline for heavy ion studies.

Contribution

It presents the first results on heavy flavor production in p-p collisions at LHC, combining multiple detection channels at different rapidities.

Findings

Measured heavy flavor production cross-sections at 7 TeV

Provided baseline data for heavy ion collision analysis

Compared results with perturbative QCD predictions

Abstract

Quarkonia and open heavy flavour production are crucial to study the properties of the nuclear matter at high energy densities and of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). In proton-proton collisions at LHC, the measurement of their production cross-section will allow to test perturbative QCD calculations in a new energy regime and provide the baseline for measurements in heavy ion collisions. In the latter, as they experience the full evolution of the collision, heavy quarks are ideal probes to study the property of the system. During the 2010 campaign of the LHC, ALICE took proton-proton data at $\sqrt{s}$=7 TeV and Pb-Pb data at $\sqrt{s_{nn}}$=2.76 TeV. The first physics results on heavy flavors production in p-p collisions are presented combining hadronic and (semi-)leptonic channels, both at central and forward rapidity.