Heavy-flavour production in proton--proton collisions with the ALICE experiment

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent ALICE experiment results on heavy-flavour hadron production in proton-proton collisions, providing insights into QCD processes, fragmentation, and coalescence mechanisms through various measurements.

Contribution

It presents new experimental data on heavy-flavour hadrons, including D mesons, leptons, and charmed baryons, and explores multiplicity-dependent effects in proton-proton collisions.

Findings

Heavy-flavour production measurements agree with perturbative QCD predictions.

Multiplicity-dependent yields reveal semi-hard QCD effects.

Charmed baryon-to-meson ratios vary with event multiplicity.

Abstract

The production of heavy-flavour hadrons in high-energy hadronic collisions is a unique source of information on various aspects of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Production of heavy-flavour hadrons in proton--proton collisions allows the test of perturbative QCD models, while the comparison of mesons and baryons with heavy-flavour quarks can differentiate between fragmentation scenarios. Multiplicity-dependent measurements allow for the understanding of semi-hard vacuum QCD effects, as well as to study the coalescence mechanisms of heavy-flavour quarks with light and strange quarks. Recent results from the ALICE experiment in proton--proton collisions on the production of D mesons and leptons from the decay of heavy-flavour hadrons, as well as charmed baryons, are presented in this contribution. Furthermore, the multiplicity dependence of self-normalised heavy-flavour electron yields, as well as that of strange to non-strange D-meson and charmed baryon-to-meson ratios are also shown.