Open heavy flavour and J/psi production in proton-proton collisions measured with the ALICE experiment at LHC

TL;DR

This paper presents measurements of open heavy flavour and J/psi production in proton-proton collisions at the LHC, providing crucial tests for pQCD calculations and references for heavy-ion studies.

Contribution

It reports new experimental results on heavy flavour and J/psi production at multiple rapidities and energies, including the first LHC measurement of J/psi polarization.

Findings

First LHC J/psi polarization measurement

Multiplicity dependence of J/psi production

D-meson measurements at low transverse momentum

Abstract

Open heavy flavour and J/psi production are powerful tools to test pQCD calculations in proton-proton collisions in the new LHC energy regime. In addition, they provide the necessary reference for the ALICE heavy-ion program. The ALICE experiment at the LHC collected proton-proton collisions at sqrt{s} = 7 and 2.76 TeV in 2010 and 2011. We report here the latest results of open heavy flavour and J/psi production at both mid- and forward-rapidity via their various hadronic and leptonic decay channels. These include, among other topics, the first LHC result on J/psi polarization, multiplicity dependence of the J/psi production, D-meson measurement down to low transverse momentum and J/psi production from B-hadron decays. Comparisons with different theoretical models will be discussed as well.