Production of open charm and beauty states in pPb collisions with LHCb

TL;DR

This paper reports on LHCb measurements of open charm and beauty hadron production in pPb collisions, revealing nuclear matter effects and constraining nuclear parton distributions at very low Bjorken-x, which aids understanding of the Quark-Gluon Plasma.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurements of heavy-flavor production at very low transverse momentum in pPb collisions, with implications for nuclear PDFs and QGP studies.

Findings

Strong suppression at positive rapidity

No significant suppression at backward rapidity

Constraints on nuclear PDFs at Bjorken-x~10^{-5}

Abstract

These proceedings summarize the LHCb measurements of charm- and beauty-hadron production in pPb collisions. The studies are made down to very low-\pt of the observed heavy-flavor hadrons using fully reconstructed decays. Nuclear matter effects are quantified via nuclear modification factors and forward-backward production ratios. A strong suppression is observed at positive rapidity (proton beam direction), while a modest or no suppression is seen for the backward rapidity (lead beam direction). The nuclear parton distributions of the lead nucleus is constrained down to Bjorken-$x\sim10^{-5}$, assuming it is the only nuclear effect for open heavy-flavor production. These data provide important inputs to understand the Quark-Gluon Plasma formed in heavy-nucleus collisions.