Measurements of the nuclear modification factor and the elliptic azimuthal anisotropy of heavy flavours with ALICE

Abstract

Heavy quark production is sensitive to the transport properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma created in heavy-ion collisions at high energies. The production yields of charmed mesons and heavy-flavour decay leptons in most central collisions allow to study the parton energy loss mechanism of heavy quarks propagating through the dense and colored medium. Concurrently, measurements of the elliptic azimuthal anisotropy of D mesons and heavy-flavour leptons in semi-central collisions allow to study the degree of thermalization of heavy quarks within the strongly coupled, flowing medium. We present ALICE measurements of the nuclear modification factor (RAA) and elliptic flow coefficient (v2) of heavy-flavour decay electrons and D mesons reconstructed via their hadronic decays at mid-rapidity (|y| < 1) and muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays at forward rapidity (2.5 < y < 4) in Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV. Several theoretical predictions are confronted with these measurements.