Heavy-flavour production measurements in pp collisions at the LHC with ALICE

Abstract

The measurement of heavy-flavour production in pp collisions at the LHC allows to study the production mechanisms and to test perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (pQCD) in a new energy domain. Further it provides important reference data for investigations of the medium effects in Pb-Pb collisions, where charm and beauty production measurements are regarded as a unique probe for parton-medium interaction dynamics. We present preliminary results of open heavy-flavour production measurements with ALICE using hadronic D meson decays as well as semi-leptonic decays of D and B mesons and compare these with pQCD predictions. The dependence of J/psi production on event multiplicity is also shown