Open heavy-flavour production in pp and p--Pb collisions with the ALICE experiment

TL;DR

This paper discusses recent measurements of open heavy-flavour hadron production in proton-proton and proton-lead collisions using the ALICE detector at the LHC, providing insights into strong interactions and nuclear matter properties.

Contribution

It presents new experimental results on heavy-flavour production in pp and p--Pb collisions, utilizing ALICE's advanced detection capabilities during LHC Run-1.

Findings

Heavy-flavour production measured at 7 TeV and 5.02 TeV

Results shed light on strong interaction dynamics

Data contribute to understanding nuclear matter properties

Abstract

Measurements of the heavy-flavour hadron production are a powerful tool to study the nature of strong interaction and to understand the properties of nuclear matter that is created in ultra-relativistic hadron-hadron collisions. The excellent tracking and vertexing capabilities of the ALICE experiment, together with its particle identification systems, allow for an efficient identification and reconstruction of decays of hadrons that contain heavy quarks. A selection of recent measurements on open heavy-flavour production from pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV and p--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV, collected with the ALICE detector during the LHC Run-1 phase, are discussed in this paper.