Reference heavy flavour cross sections in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV, using a pQCD-driven sqrt(s)-scaling of ALICE measurements at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Abstract

We provide a reference in proton-proton collisions at the energy of the Pb-Pb 2010 run at the LHC, sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV, for the pt-differential production cross section of D0, D+, and D*+ mesons in |y| < 0.5, of electrons from heavy flavour decays in |y| < 0.9, and of muons from heavy flavour decays in 2.5 < y < 4. The reference is obtained by applying a pQCD-driven scaling (based on the FONLL calculation) to ALICE preliminary data at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. In order to validate the procedure, we scale the D meson cross section to sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV and compare to the corresponding measurements from the CDF experiment.