Open heavy flavour nuclear modification factor in ALICE

TL;DR

This paper presents measurements of the nuclear modification factor for open heavy-flavour mesons and decay electrons/muons in Pb-Pb collisions, providing insights into the quark-gluon plasma effects on heavy quarks.

Contribution

It reports new experimental results on heavy-flavour nuclear modification factors in Pb-Pb collisions at LHC energies, using ALICE detector data.

Findings

Suppression of heavy-flavour yields in Pb-Pb collisions compared to pp.

Differences in nuclear modification factors between charm and beauty.

Results consistent with energy loss models in quark-gluon plasma.

Abstract

The ALICE experiment has measured charm and beauty production in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 and 7 TeV and sqrt(sNN) = 2.76 TeV, respectively, via the exclusive reconstruction of hadronic D meson decays and semi-leptonic D and B meson decays. In this contribution, recent results on the nuclear modification factor for open charmed mesons and heavy-flavour decay electrons at central rapidity and muons at forward rapidity are presented and discussed.