Abstract
The ALICE detector at the LHC is specifically designed to investigate the properties of the hot and dense medium, consisting of deconfined quarks and gluons (QGP), created in high energy heavy-ion collisions. Heavy-flavour particles are well- suited probes to investigate the properties of such a medium, since they are mainly pro- duced in the initial phase and they subsequently experience the full evolution of the col- lision. In the ALICE experiment, the Inner Tracking System (ITS) plays an important role for heavy-flavour measurements. Interesting results have been obtained by analyz- ing pp, p-Pb and Pb-Pb data collected so far. The upgrade of the ITS, combined with the expected increase of LHC luminosity in Pb-Pb collisions, will allow the current per- formance for heavy flavour measurements to be significantly improved in particular in the low momentum region, and new measurements will become accessible (e.g. the Λc baryon in Pb-Pb collisions). The perspectives for heavy-flavour measurements expected after the second long shut-down (LS2) of LHC will be discussed.
Highlights
The ALICE detector at the LHC is designed to investigate the properties of the hot and dense medium, consisting of deconfined quarks and gluons (QGP), created in high energy heavy-ion collisions
If heavy quarks thermalize in the medium or if they interact strongly with it, the heavy-flavour hadrons produced by heavy quark hadronization should inherit the medium azimuthal anisotropy, resulting in a non-zero v2
The baryon-overmeson ratio for charm (Λc/D) and beauty (Λb/B) hadrons observed in heavy-ion collisions with respect to pp gives additional information about the role of the recombination mechanism in heavy quark hadronization
Summary
In ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions the QGP can be studied by means of various probes emerging from the collision; in particular “rare” probes like charm and beauty hadrons allow for a detailed characterization of the formation and the evolution of the QGP state. The effects of energy loss can be quantified using the nuclear modification factor RAA, which is defined as the ratio of the particle yield in heavy-ion collisions compared to that in pp, scaled by the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions Ncoll. It is interesting to compare among them and with theoretical predictions the nuclear modification factors of several hadron species, containing charm, beauty and light quarks. The baryon-overmeson ratio for charm (Λc/D) and beauty (Λb/B) hadrons observed in heavy-ion collisions with respect to pp gives additional information about the role of the recombination mechanism in heavy quark hadronization
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