Perspectives for the measurement of D s + mesons via the D s + →K + K − π + channel in the ALICE experiment

Abstract

Heavy quarks, such as charm, are produced in hard scatterings in the early stages of high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions and are expected to be a powerful tool to investigate the properties of the quark gluon plasma (QGP). The tracking detectors of the ALICE apparatus will allow to track and identify particles in central rapidity range down to low P t . Among D mesons it would be particularly interesting to measure D s yield via an exclusive hadronic decay channel because it could help to disentangle different hadronization mechanisms. The possibility of reconstructing the D s meson through its D s + →K + K − π + decay channel in the central barrel was studied. The problem considered is characterized by the comparatively low yield of the D s mesons against the huge amount of combinatorial background. Different kinematic and topological cuts have been studied in order to increase the signal-to-background ratio and the statistical significance. In addition, D s mesons preferentially decay through intermediate resonant states and this fact can improve the separation of signal from background. Results of cut parameters tuning and values of significance for an analysis performed on simulated data are presented.