Measurements of low-$p_{\rm T}$ electrons from semileptonic heavy-flavour hadron decays at mid-rapidity in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at $\mathbf{\sqrt{{\it s}_\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 2.76 TeV

TL;DR

This study measures low-$p_T$ electrons from heavy-flavour decays in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV, providing insights into heavy-quark production, nuclear modification effects, and hadronization at mid-rapidity.

Contribution

It extends the $p_T$ range of nuclear modification factor measurements and improves the precision of heavy-flavour electron yields in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Observation of nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ at low $p_T$

Enhanced understanding of heavy-flavour production scaling

Insights into initial-state and hadronization effects

Abstract

Transverse-momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) differential yields of electrons from semileptonic heavy-flavour hadron decays have been measured in the most central (0-10%) and in semi-central (20-40%) Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ TeV. The corresponding production cross section in pp collisions has been measured at the same energy with substantially reduced systematic uncertainties with respect to previously published results. The modification of the yield in Pb-Pb collisions with respect to the expectation from an incoherent superposition of nucleon-nucleon collisions is quantified at mid-rapidity ($|y|$ $<$ 0.8) in the $p_{\rm T}$ interval 0.5-3 GeV/$c$ via the nuclear modification factor, $R_{\rm AA}$. This paper extends the $p_{\rm T}$ reach of the $R_{\rm AA}$ measurement towards significantly lower values with respect to a previous publication. In Pb-Pb collisions the $p_{\rm T}$-differential measurements of yields at low $p_{\rm T}$ are essential to investigate the scaling of heavy-flavour production with the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions. Heavy-quark hadronization, a collective expansion and even initial-state effects, such as the nuclear modification of the Parton Distribution Functions, are also expected to have a significant effect on the measured distribution.