Measurements of heavy-flavour production and azimuthal anisotropy in Pb--Pb collisions with the ALICE detector

Abstract

Hadrons containing heavy quarks, i.e. charm or beauty, are unique probes of the properties of the hot and dense QCD medium produced in heavy-ion collisions. Due to their large masses, heavy quarks are produced at the initial stage of the collision, almost exclusively via hard partonic scattering processes. Therefore, they are expected to experience the full collision history propagating through the QCD medium losing energy via elastic and inelastic collisions with the medium constituents. The ALICE collaboration has measured the production of open heavy-flavour hadrons via their hadronic and semi-electronic decays at mid-rapidity and in the semi-muonic decay channel at \mbox{forward rapidity} in pp, p--Pb and Pb--Pb collisions. In this talk the latest results on the open \mbox{heavy-flavour nuclear modification factor, $R_\mathrm{AA}$, and elliptic flow, $v_{2}$, are presented}.