Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

Heavy quark measurements with ALICE at the LHC

Indranil Das

Saha Institute

Heavy quarks are produced at the first instant of a nucleus-nucleus collision and therefore are an important tool to study the subsequent high energy-density medium formed in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. A series of experimental efforts for understanding the properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a medium consisting of a deconfined state of quarks and gluons, are based on measuring the bound states of heavy quark-antiquark pairs known as quarkonia and open heavy-flavours. However, the medium modification of heavy-flavour hadron production includes also the contribution of cold nuclear matter effects such as shadowing or nuclear break-up in addition to the QGP effects. Proton-nucleus collisions, where no QGP is expected, are used to measure cold nuclear matter effects on quarkonium and open heavy-flavour production. Finally, heavy-quark measurements in proton-proton collisions are used as reference for both heavy-ion and proton-ion collisions.

ALICE measurements of heavy-quarks for various energies and colliding systems (pp, p-Pb, Pb-Pb and Xe-Xe) during the LHC Run-1 and Run-2 periods will be discussed. Recent ALICE results of nuclear modification factor, elliptic flow and polarization will be specially highlighted. A comparison of the results among the LHC experiments and theoretical models will be also presented.