No Arabic abstract
The ALICE experiment, currently in the commissioning phase, will study nucleus-nucleus and proton-proton collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We review the ALICE heavy-flavour physics program and present a selection of results on the expected performance for the case of proton-proton collisions.
The ALICE experiment, currently in the commissioning phase, will study nucleus-nucleus and proton-proton collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We review the ALICE heavy-flavour physics program.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where lead nuclei will collide at the unprecedented c.m.s. energy of 5.5 TeV per nucleon-nucleon pair, will offer new and unique opportunities for the study of the properties of strongly interacting matter at high energy density over extended volumes. We will briefly explain why heavy-flavour particles are well-suited tools for such a study and we will describe how the ALICE experiment is preparing to make use of these tools.
The measurement of the heavy-flavour production cross sections in pp collisions at the LHC will allow to test perturbative QCD calculations in a new energy domain. Moreover, within the physics program of the ALICE experiment, it will provide the reference for the study of medium effects in Pb-Pb collisions, where heavy quarks are regarded as sensitive probes of parton-medium interaction dynamics. We present the status and first preliminary results of charm and beauty production measurements with the ALICE experiment, using hadronic D meson decays and semi-leptonic D and B meson decays, including the first cross section measurement of muons from heavy flavour decays at forward rapidity. We also describe the preliminary cross section measurement for J/psi production, obtained using the di-electron decay channel at central rapidity and the di-muon decay channel at forward rapidity.
We present the first results from the ALICE experiment on the nuclear modification factors for heavy-flavour hadron production in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt{s_NN}=2.76 TeV. Using proton-proton and lead-lead collision samples at sqrt{s}=7 TeV and sqrt{s_NN}=2.76 TeV, respectively, nuclear modification factors R_AA(pt) were measured for D mesons at central rapidity (via displaced decay vertex reconstruction), and for electrons and muons, at central and forward rapidity, respectively.
ALICE will study nucleus-nucleus and proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The main goal of the experiment is to investigate the properties of QCD matter at the extreme energy densities that will be reached in Pb-Pb collisions. Heavy quarks (charm and beauty) are regarded as powerful tools for this study. After briefly reviewing the ALICE heavy-flavour program, we will describe the preparation for the first measurements to be performed with pp collisions.