Open and hidden heavy-flavor production in small systems with ALICE

TL;DR

This paper presents new measurements of heavy-flavor hadron production and elliptic flow in small systems like pp and p-Pb collisions, providing insights into QCD and collective phenomena in high-multiplicity events.

Contribution

It reports the first measurements of $J/ ho$ elliptic flow in high-multiplicity pp collisions and new polarization data for open-beauty hadrons at 13 TeV.

Findings

First $v_2$ measurement of $J/ ho$ in high-multiplicity pp collisions

New polarization measurement of non-prompt D*+ at 13 TeV

Comparison with models enhances understanding of heavy-flavor production

Abstract

Measurements of quarkonia (heavy quark and antiquark bound states) and open-heavy flavour hadrons in hadronic collisions provide a unique testing ground for understanding quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Although recently there was significant progress, our understanding of hadronic collisions has been challenged by the observation of intriguing effects in high-multiplicity proton-proton (pp) and p-Pb collisions, such as collective phenomena. The excellent particle identification, track and decay-vertex reconstruction capabilities of the ALICE experiment are exploited to measure quarkonia as well as open-heavy flavour hadron production at midrapidity while quarkonium measurements are inclusive at forward rapidity. In this contribution, the first measurements of the elliptic flow ($v_2$) of $J/\psi$ in high multiplicity pp collisions is shown. New measurements of quarkonium and open-beauty hadron production in pp and p-Pb collisions are presented, such as the first measurement of the non-prompt $\text{D}^{*+}$ polarization in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV. The comparison of results with available models is also discussed.