Heavy Flavour Measurements in pp and Pb--Pb Collisions with the ALICE Experiment at LHC

Abstract

Heavy flavour is mainly produced during the initial hard partonic interactions in a heavy ion collision, and is well-suited to probe the early phases of the evolution of the system. This contribution will focus on Pb--Pb analyses at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 2.76 TeV, with some hints at the $\pp$ data at 7 and 2.76 TeV. Results of open heavy flavour analyses will be shown for various decay channels, including electrons, muons, and hadronic charm decays, together with results obtained for heavy quarkonia at both central and forward rapidities.