Recent results from the ALICE experiment on open heavy flavours in hadronic collisions at the LHC

Abstract

ALICE is the LHC experiment devoted to the study of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). To probe this high energy density state of strongly interacting matter expected to be produced in heavy-ion collisions at high energies, measurements performed in various systems (pp, p-Pb and Pb-Pb) are compared to each other. Heavy quarks are produced in initial hard partonic scatterings on a short time scale and participate in the subsequent evolution of the medium. This makes them sensitive probes of the QGP. With ALICE, open heavy flavours are studied using D mesons (D$^0$, D$^+$, D$^{*+}$) reconstructed via their hadronic decay channels in the mid-rapidity region ($|y|<0.5$) and with heavy-flavour decay leptons reconstructed in the electronic (muonic) channel in the central rapidity region $|y|<0.9$ (forward rapidity region $2.5<y<4$). We present ALICE measurements of the nuclear modification factor $R_{\rm{AA}}$ and the elliptic flow $v_2$ for D mesons and heavy-flavour decay leptons in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}=2.76$ TeV. The corresponding measurements in p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV are also discussed. First results on the azimuthal correlations between heavy-flavour particles and hadrons are presented as well as the charged-particle multiplicity dependence of heavy-flavour production in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV.