Open heavy flavour production via semi-leptonic decay muons in lead lead collisions at $\sqrtsnn = 2.76$ \TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper reports on measurements of open heavy flavour production via semi-leptonic decay muons in lead-lead collisions at 2.76 TeV, revealing suppression patterns that inform on heavy quark interactions with the quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

It presents the first measurement of heavy quark production via muons in PbPb collisions at the LHC, analyzing centrality and transverse momentum dependence.

Findings

Muon yields are suppressed by about a factor of two in central collisions.

Suppression is independent of muon transverse momentum within errors.

Results provide insights into heavy quark energy loss in quark-gluon plasma.

Abstract

Measurements of heavy quark production and suppression in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions probe the interactions of heavy quarks with the hot, dense medium created in the collisions. ATLAS has measured heavy quark production in $\sqrtsnn = 2.76$ \TeV \PbPb collisions via semi-leptonic decays of open heavy flavour hadrons to muons. Results are presented for the per-event muon yield as a function of muon transverse momentum, \pT, over the range of $4 < \pT < 14$ \GeV. The centrality dependence of the muon yields is characterized by the "central to peripheral" ratio, \Rcp. Muon production is suppressed by approximately a factor of two in central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Within the experimental errors, the observed suppression is independent of muon \pT for all centralities.