D meson production in Pb-Pb collisions with the ALICE detector

Abstract

Open heavy-flavour hadrons are a powerful tool to investigate the properties of the high-density medium created in heavy-ion collisions at high energies as they come from the hadronization of heavy quarks. The latter are created in the early stage of the interaction and experience the whole collision history. Heavy quarks in-medium energy loss can be investigated by comparing the heavy-flavour production cross sections in p-p and nucleus-nucleus collisions. In addition, initial spatial anisotropy of the fireball is converted into momentum anysotropy of final state particles, in particular the elliptic flow. D mesons are identifed from their hadronic decays which can be reconstructed in the central rapidity region using the tracking and PID detectors of the ALICE detector.