Production and Spectroscopy of Heavy Hadrons at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent heavy flavor production and decay measurements at the LHC, highlighting their role in testing QCD, exploring CP violation, and guiding future new physics searches.

Contribution

It provides an overview of how new LHC measurements extend knowledge of heavy flavor physics and discusses future prospects as luminosities increase.

Findings

Heavy flavor production tests QCD models at new energy scales.

Results contribute to understanding CP violation and new physics searches.

Future measurements will benefit from increased LHC luminosities.

Abstract

Measurements of heavy flavor production and decay have featured prominently in the early results from the four large LHC experiments: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb. These results provide tests of QCD models in a new energy region and point the way toward future measurements of CP violation and searches for new physics. An overview of open heavy flavor studies is presented here, focusing on how the new measurements extend our knowledge of this area of physics. Heavy quarkonia states at the LHC are summarized in other proceedings of this conference. I also discuss briefly how heavy flavor measurements are likely to evolve as LHC luminosities increase.