Open Heavy-Flavour Measurements in Small Systems with ALICE at the LHC

Abstract

Heavy quarks (charm and beauty) are produced at the initial stages of hadronic collisions in hard scattering processes. In pp collisions, their production provides a test bed for perturbative QCD calculations and a crucial baseline for p–Pb and Pb–Pb collisions. Furthermore, differential measurements, for example their production as a function of charged-particle multiplicity, may provide insight into the role of Multiple Parton Interactions (MPI) and the interplay between hard and soft mechanism for particle production. In the p–Pb collision system, the formation and kinematic properties of heavy-flavour hadrons can be influenced at all stages by Cold Nuclear Matter effects and concurrent MPI. In addition, collective effects may be present. In this contribution, recent open heavy-flavour results from pp collisions at \(\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}\) = 5.02, 7, 8 and 13 TeV and p–Pb collisions at \(\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}\) = 5.02 and 8.16 TeV, with ALICE at the LHC are presented. The results include the production cross-section, nuclear modification factor and multiplicity dependence studies of the production of D mesons, charmed baryons and heavy-flavour hadron decay’s electrons at mid-rapidity and muons at forward rapidity. The results will also be compared with theoretical model predictions.