Abstract
An overview of the most recent charm measurements from the ALICE Collaboration is presented in this document. The study of heavy-flavour production is important to understand the properties of the hot and dense medium formed in ultra-relativistic heavyion collisions. In this document the journey of charm in the medium, from the production to the hadronisation into hadrons, is described. Both open charm and quarkonium measurements are presented, starting from D-meson and J/ψ production cross sections in pp collisions and their comparison with theoretical calculations. Recent measurements of relative abundances of different particle species are discussed, in particular the Ds/D0 and ratios, that are sensitive to the hadronisation mechanisms and to the strangeness and to the baryon-to-meson enhancement. The energy loss mechanisms and the collective motion in the medium are investigated through the D-meson and J/ψ nuclear modification factor and the elliptic flow measurements. Further investigations on possible medium-like effects observed in high-multiplicity pp and p-Pb collisions are also addressed.
Highlights
One of the main goal of the ALICE experiment at the LHC is the characterization of the extremely hot and strongly coupled medium, the quark-gluon plamsa (QGP), formed in highenergy heavy-ion collisions
Heavy quarks are sensitive to the QGP temperature, that is reflected in the observed suppression of charmonium states, that probe the color screening and regeneration in medium
The pT differential production cross sections of hadrons containing charm quarks are calculated as a convolution of three terms: (i) the parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the incoming protons, (ii) the partonic scattering cross section, calculated as a perturbative series in powers of the strong coupling constant αs, and (iii) the fragmentation function, which parametrises the nonperturbative evolution of a heavy quark into a given species of heavy-flavour hadron [6]
Summary
One of the main goal of the ALICE experiment at the LHC is the characterization of the extremely hot and strongly coupled medium, the quark-gluon plamsa (QGP), formed in highenergy heavy-ion collisions. Heavy quarks are sensitive to the QGP temperature, that is reflected in the observed suppression of charmonium states, that probe the color screening and regeneration in medium Smaller colliding systems such as pp or p-Pb, are useful as reference for Pb–Pb measurements, but they are interesting for the study of Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and Cold Nuclear Matter (CNM) effects. Heavy flavour hadron production cross sections The study of the production of hadrons containing heavy quarks in pp collisions is a sensitive test of QCD calculations with the factorisation approach In this scheme, the pT differential production cross sections of hadrons containing charm quarks are calculated as a convolution of three terms: (i) the parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the incoming protons, (ii) the partonic scattering cross section, calculated as a perturbative series in powers of the strong coupling constant αs, and (iii) the fragmentation function, which parametrises the nonperturbative evolution of a heavy quark into a given species of heavy-flavour hadron [6]. These observations suggest that, looking uniquely in the meson sector, the universality of the fragmentation fractions for charm can not be ruled out
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