Abstract
This report reviews the study of open heavy-flavour and quarkonium production in high-energy hadronic collisions, as tools to investigate fundamental aspects of Quantum Chromodynamics, from the proton and nucleus structure at high energy to deconfinement and the properties of the Quark–Gluon Plasma. Emphasis is given to the lessons learnt from LHC Run 1 results, which are reviewed in a global picture with the results from SPS and RHIC at lower energies, as well as to the questions to be addressed in the future. The report covers heavy flavour and quarkonium production in proton–proton, proton–nucleus and nucleus–nucleus collisions. This includes discussion of the effects of hot and cold strongly interacting matter, quarkonium photoproduction in nucleus–nucleus collisions and perspectives on the study of heavy flavour and quarkonium with upgrades of existing experiments and new experiments. The report results from the activity of the SaporeGravis network of the I3 Hadron Physics programme of the European Union 7mathrm{th} Framework Programme.
Highlights
Heavy-flavour hadrons, containing open or hidden charm and beauty flavour, are among the most important tools for the study of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in highenergy hadronic collisions, from the production mechanisms in proton–proton collisions and their modification in proton–nucleus collisions (p–A) to the investigation of the properties of the hot and dense strongly interacting Quark– Gluon Plasma (QGP) in nucleus–nucleus collisions (AA).Heavy-flavour production in pp collisions provides important tests of our understanding of various aspects of QCD
The nuclear modification of the parton distribution functions can be studied, in a very clean environment, using quarkonium photoproduction in ultra-peripheral nucleus– nucleus collisions, in which a photon from the coherent electromagnetic field of an accelerated nucleus interacts with the coherent gluon field of the other nucleus or with the gluon field of a single nucleon in the other nucleus. During their propagation through the QGP produced in high-energy nucleus–nucleus collisions, heavy quarks interact with the constituents of this medium and lose a part of their momentum, being able to reveal some of the QGP properties
The measurement of charmonium production is especially promising at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where the higher energy density reached in the medium and the larger number of cc pairs produced in central Pb–Pb collisions should help to disentangle suppression andcombination scenarios
Summary
As seen in the previous sections, and summarised in the one, alongside the great progress in understanding the physics of heavy quarks in proton–proton and heavy-ion collisions, a lot of questions emerged too. Those, as well as the quest for a quantitative description of the hot deconfined quark–gluon matter, call for upgrades in existing experiments and for new ones, in which the potential of heavy quarks in answering those questions is fully exploited. We discuss the ongoing efforts and the possibilities for new experiments
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